Study of Usability of Security and Privacy in Context Aware Mobile Applications

Abstract

Mobile devices, such as smart phones, are becoming increasingly powerful with more memory, processing capacity and interface to several hard and soft sensors, making it possible to easily develop and use context aware applications on them. Context aware applications make use of context from several sources including location, light, sound, as well social context and users’ behavioral patterns to make more informed decisions for the user. Since these applications are indeed aware of all the user’s personal information and context, it is important that they be designed with security and privacy in mind. In this paper, we discuss a study conducted to understand user perception of security and privacy features implemented in context aware mobile applications, improvements that can be made and design guidelines that will help improve the usability of these features.