Personal Privacy Evaluation of Smart Devices Applications Serving Hajj and Umrah Rituals

Abstract

Mobile Applications (apps) are one of the most important tools that provide many services in different and varied fields of human life such as social, health, commercial, political, and other services. These apps make information easily available to everyone, fast to get, and cheaper than traditional methods. The Hajj pilgrims and Umrah performances (Al-Rahman Holy guests) have a share of the electronic services provided by many governmental and private sectors inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The offered services ensure that these religious guests have the ability to gain useful knowledge before and during the period they are stayed in the land of the Two Holy Mosques. In this paper, we collected all possible apps related to Hajj and Umrah, from the Google Store, during the season of Hajj 1440 AH (2019 AD), which amounted to 471 apps through searching on relevant applications to Hajj and Umrah services. We studied the applications public info trying to gain personal privacy characteristics from user rating, number of evaluators, recent updates, volume of applications, languages, number of downloads, and specific services provided. The results showed that the largest percentage of the studied apps are the facilitations of the Hajj ritual with 18%, followed by 15.1% for Umrah ritual and 10.2% for prayer supplications. The results also indicated attractive 33 common languages used, showing English with most popularity of 27.4%, followed by Arabic and Urdu of 24.3% and 14.3%. In addition, the study specified the most desirable services favoured by the religious guests expressing interesting valuable remarks.