“I do (not) need that Feature!” – Understanding Users’ Awareness and Control of Privacy Permissions on Android Smartphones

We present the results of the first field study (N = 132 ) investigating users’ (1) awareness of Android privacy permissions granted to installed apps and (2) control behavior over these permissions. Our research is motivated by many smartphone features and apps requiring access to personal data. While Android provides privacy permission management mechanisms to control access to this data, its usage is not yet well understood. To this end, we built and deployed an Android application on participants’ smartphones, acquiring data on actual privacy permission states of installed apps, monitoring permission changes, and assessing reasons for changes using experience sampling. The results of our study show that users often conduct multiple revocations in short time frames, and revocations primarily affect rarely used apps or permissions non-essential for apps’ core functionality. Our findings can inform future (proactive) privacy control mechanisms and help target opportune moments for supporting privacy control.