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Not Seen, Not Heard in the Digital World! Measuring Privacy Practices in Children's Apps by Sun, Ruoxi; Xue, Minhui; Tyson, Gareth; Wang, Shuo; Camtepe, Seyit; Nepal, Surya is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Not Seen, Not Heard in the Digital World! Measuring Privacy Practices in Children's Apps about?

The digital age has brought a world of opportunity to children. Connectivity can be a game-changer for some of the world's most marginalized children. However, while legislatures around the world have enacted regulations to protect children's online privacy, and app stores have instituted various protections, privacy in mobile apps remains a growing concern for parents and wider society. In this paper, we explore the potential privacy issues and threats that exist in these apps. We investigate 20,195 mobile apps from the Google Play store that are designed particularly for children (Family apps) or include children in their target user groups (Normal apps). Using both static and dynamic analysis, we find that 4.47% of Family apps request location permissions, even though collecting location information from children is forbidden by the Play store, and 81.25% of Family apps use trackers (which are not allowed in children's apps). Even major developers with 40+ kids apps on the Play store use ad trackers. Furthermore, we find that most permission request notifications are not well designed for children, and 19.25% apps have inconsistent content age ratings across the different protec

Author

Sun, Ruoxi; Xue, Minhui; Tyson, Gareth; Wang, Shuo; Camtepe, Seyit; Nepal, Surya

Published

2023

Language

EN