Abstract
Android's permission system empowers informed privacy decisions when installing third-party applications. However, examining the access permissions is not enough to assess privacy exposure; even seemingly harmless applications can severely expose user data. This is what we demonstrate here: an application with the common READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and the INTERNET permissions can be the basis of extracting and inferring a wealth of private information. What has been overlooked is that such a curious application can prey on data stored in the Android's commonly accessible external storage or on unprotected phone sensors. By accessing and stealthily extracting data thought to be unworthy of protection, we manage to access highly sensitive information: user identifiers and habits. Leveraging data-mining techniques, we explore a set of popular applications, establishing that there is a clear privacy danger for numerous users installing innocent-looking and but, possibly, curious applications.
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