Studies suggest that smartphone users might be putting their privacy at a much greater risk than they might be aware of and the researchers have the answers to everything that the users might be sharing.
Studies Suggest Serious Data Leak, Unknowingly
The study was conducted by the researchers at the University of Bologna, Italy, and Benjamin Baron from the University College London. The studies suggest that sharing personal information via location tracking could be a serious threat to the user’s privacy.
The researchers created a mobile application called TrackingAdvisor that would continuously collect the user’s location. From the location data, the app could further find out the personal information on the users. And further asked the users to check the authenticity of the information.
Micro Musolesi from the University of Bologna said that smartphone users are usually unaware of the “privacy implications” of the permissions they grant to the apps and services. This is in special reference to the location-tracking information in smartphones and many other mobile apps. He said that because of the advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, the data provide sensitive information like the user’s location, their daily routine, habits, interests, and a lot more information about their personalities overall.
With the application created by the researchers, TrackingAdvisor, researchers were able to understand the types of personal information that the users tend to leak unknowing to the apps and how sensitive the information could be. The study is published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies.
The study had 69 participants who installed and used the TrackingAdvisor for a minimum of two weeks. The app was further able to track over 200,000 locations. Along with 2500 places and collected approximately 5000 pieces of personal information of the users. The information not only included their demographics but also their overall personality.
Smartphone Users Leak Personal Habits And Health Unknowingly To Apps
The study concluded that the information collected from 69 participants over two weeks included the health conditions of the users, their socio-economic status, and their ethnicity and religion.
Musolesi said that the aim behind their study was to ensure that people know the massive amounts of information and the quality of such information the apps can go through and gather with just the location tracking feature.
Their second agenda was to understand how relevant this information was for the users or if they would call it a violation of their privacy. The researchers suggest that this study has paved the way to design a system that can protect the privacy of the users especially for information that is too sensitive.
