Mobile Usage Patterns and Privacy Implications

Privacy is an important concern for mobile computing. Users might not understand the privacy implications of their actions and therefore not alter their behavior depending on where they move, when they do so, and who is in their surroundings. Since empirical data about the privacy behavior of users in mobile environments is limited, we conducted a survey study of ~600 users recruited from Florida State University and Craigslist. Major findings include: (1) People often exercise little caution preserving privacy in mobile computing environments; they perform similar computing tasks in public and private. (2) Privacy is orthogonal to trust; people tend to change their computing behavior more around people they know than strangers. (3) People underestimate the privacy threats of mobile apps, and comply with permission requests from apps more often than operating systems. (4) Users' understanding of privacy is different from that of the security community, suggesting opportunities for additional privacy studies.