Associated Risks in Mobile Applications Permissions

Abstract

Mobile applications affect user’s privacy based on the granted application’s permissions as attackers exploit mobile application permissions in Android and other mobile operating systems. This research divides permissions based on Google’s classification of dangerous permissions into three groups. The first group contains the permissions that can access user’s private data such as reading call log. The second group contains the permissions that can modify user’s data such as modifying the numbers in contacts. The third group contains the remaining permissions which can track the location, and use the microphone and other sensitive issues that can spy on the user. This research is supported by a study that was conducted on 100 participants in Saudi Arabia to show the level of users’ awareness of associated risks in mobile applications permissions. Associations among the collected data are also analyzed. This research fills the gap in user’s awareness by providing best practices in addition to developing a new mobile application to help users decide whether an application is safe to be installed and used or not. This application is called “Sparrow” and is available in Google Play Store.