Privacy Concerns on Mobile Applications for Google Play Store Market

Since the introduction of smartphones and mobile applications, privacy concerns have been rapidly rising. Today, over one billion people use smartphones. Millions of different apps are being used and installed on daily basis. Whether it’s Android, IOS, Windows, or any other mobile operating system, an app might need to request extra permissions to access more data on the user’s phone. In this study, Android apps from Google Play Store are examined. Python scraping code was used to collect details about over 5,000 apps including different parameters such as permissions requested, number of installs, reviews, and several other details. The data was then analyzed using SPSS. The analyses made included descriptives and correlation. The data analysis was fruitful and different hypothesis were supported at high significance. The results showed that number of permissions requested by an app is correlated with several other variables such as number of reviews, number of installs, and review score. Limitations are mentioned in the conclusion.