Is Your Private Information Logged? An Empirical Study on Android App Logs

TL;DR

This paper empirically analyzes Android app logs to assess privacy leaks, revealing widespread issues and providing insights and recommendations for developers to better protect user privacy.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive dataset and empirical analysis of privacy leaks in Android logs, highlighting developer concerns and reasons behind leaks.

Findings

Majority of privacy leaks stem from developer unawareness

Five categories of developer concerns identified

Recommendations provided for privacy protection

Abstract

With the rapid growth of mobile apps, users' concerns about their privacy have become increasingly prominent. Android app logs serve as crucial computer resources, aiding developers in debugging and monitoring the status of Android apps, while also containing a wealth of software system information. Previous studies have acknowledged privacy leaks in software logs and Android apps as significant issues without providing a comprehensive view of the privacy leaks in Android app logs. In this study, we build a comprehensive dataset of Android app logs and conduct an empirical study to analyze the status and severity of privacy leaks in Android app logs. Our study comprises three aspects: (1) Understanding real-world developers' concerns regarding privacy issues related to software logs; (2) Studying privacy leaks in the Android app logs; (3) Investigating the characteristics of privacy-leaking Android app logs and analyzing the reasons behind them. Our study reveals five different categories of concerns from real-world developers regarding privacy issues related to software logs and the prevalence of privacy leaks in Android app logs, with the majority stemming from developers' unawareness of such leaks. Additionally, our study provides developers with suggestions to safeguard their privacy from being logged.