RSVP: https://bit.ly/2EhcUYm
Event date and time: August 5, 2020, 4-5PM
Presenter: Tanusree Sharma, PhD student in Informatics, UIUC
Title of presentation: Privacy Apps for Smartphones: An Assessment of Users’ Preferences and Limitations
Abstract:
Smartphones are becoming our most trusted computing devices for storing and dealing with highly sensitive information which makes smartphones an essential platform for utilizing privacy-preserving applications to ensure users’ privacy for different types of data. There exists a variety of privacy preserving apps on the mobile platform which claims to offer a potential way for people to protect data on their mobile phone. However, there has not been substantial systematic study of these apps on what features and functionalities they offer as well as what may contribute to their under-utilization by mobile users. In our study of “Privacy Apps for Smartphones: An Assessment of Users’ Preferences and Limitations”- we analyzed the general and privacy specific functionalities of iOS privacy preserving apps. In addition, examined user experiences, through a thematic analysis of publicly available user reviews of sampled apps. Our findings from users’ reviews and their usability provide insight on users’ challenges in using these privacy apps as well as the fundamental privacy features they are seeking. We believe these findings will guide privacy application developers in building appropriate functionalities that are more realistic and relevant to mobile users’ daily life. In addition, this study provides the preliminary steps towards a comprehensive and actionable privacy tools/architecture for mobile phones that is human centered.
Link to the research paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-50309-3_35
About the presenter: Tanusree is a doctoral student in Informatics and her research is focused on information security and Privacy. In addition, she is currently working on a research project that is assessing and evaluating cloud certifications for security and privacy protections and how they can be operationalized for better measurement and protections. Her recent work about COVID-19 apps and privacy issues is featured in Nature Medicine and Forbes.