Communications of the ACM
Study Shows People Act to Protect Privacy When Told How Often Phone Apps Share Personal Information
A Carnegie Mellon University study has found that once smartphone users learn how frequently their information is shared with their apps, they will act quickly to limit it.
Credit: vitamincm.com
Smartphone users will act quickly to put limits on what information their smartphone apps have access to when they learn how frequently their information is shared with these apps, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study.
The three-stage study involved 23 volunteers using their own Android devices. During the first week, researchers gathered information about the users' app usage. During the second week, the users were given access to AppOps, an app permission manager that enables users to directly control what information, such as location and call logs, different apps can access. In the third phase, they received daily "privacy nudges" informing them of how many times specific information was shared with a given app.
The researchers found gaining access to the app permission manager prompted several actions to restrict apps' access to certain data, but users quickly stopped using the manager after this initial burst of activity.
However, the privacy nudges were successful in prompting users to take more preemptive action to restrict apps' access to sensitive data.
The researchers will share the study's results at the CHI 2015 conference, which takes place April 18-23 in Seoul, Korea.
From Carnegie Mellon News (PA)
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