State of the art on Privacy Risk Estimation Related to Android Applications

Abstract

Mobile applications have access to users data and may leak it to third parties without users consent. Googles Android platforms include a permission model that restricts applications access to users personal information. However, Android users have a big decision to make before they install an app from the Google Play Store. Will they accept the full list of permissions and have faith that it will not overstep its boundaries, or refuse to install it at all? Users are not aware of how their personal data would be used once applications are installed and permissions granted. This raises a significant privacy risk for Android users. This paper presents an overview and discusses the implications of the findings in current research focusing on their approaches towards users awareness of the privacy risk involved with granting permissions to Android applications.