A Data Transparency Framework for Mobile Applications

TL;DR

This paper proposes a framework with machine-readable privacy policies and incentive mechanisms to improve transparency and privacy awareness in mobile applications, aiding consumers and motivating developers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel privacy transparency framework for mobile apps, integrating machine-readable policies and incentives to promote privacy-conscious development.

Findings

Framework enables better consumer understanding of privacy policies.

Incentive mechanisms encourage developers to adopt privacy transparency.

Supports development of advanced privacy management tools.

Abstract

In today's mobile application marketplace, the ability of consumers to make informed choices regarding their privacy is extremely limited. Consumers largely rely on privacy policies and app permission mechanisms, but these do an inadequate job of conveying how information will be collected, used, stored, and shared. Mobile application developers go largely unrewarded for making apps more privacy conscious as it is difficult to communicate these features to consumers while they are searching for a new app. This paper provides an overview of a framework designed to help consumers make informed choices, and an incentive mechanism to encourage app developers to implement it. This framework includes machine readable privacy policies encouraged by mobile app stores and enhanced by user software agents. Such a framework would provide the foundation required for more advanced forms of privacy management to develop.