A Study of Android Application Execution Trends and Their Privacy Threats to a User with Respect to Data Leaks and Compromise

Abstract

Android is used as an operating system by a vast range of devices such as mobile phones, tablets, TV sets, watches, etc., providing users with a collection of android applications to, carry through, their daily needs. Android security has been built upon a “Permission-based mechanism”, which gives access to the critical information, of an Android device to an application, and often does not allow the user to understand the privacy implications of those accepted permissions. User’s overriding desire to complete the primary task to install an Android application reduces their attention to the installation-time permission requests. This study on Android applications will help the users to gain better understanding of the required and used permissions in Android environment, giving them a preferable user control to effectively maintain confidentiality, integrity, availability, security, and privacy of user’s data.