University of Twente Student Theses
Beyond COPPA : Analysing Data Safety Across All Age Groups in Mobile Apps
Mariani, Adamo (2024) Beyond COPPA : Analysing Data Safety Across All Age Groups in Mobile Apps.
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| Abstract: | Mobile applications have the potential to access a vast range of user personal information, and as their use in our daily lives continues to grow and diversify, so does their ability to collect user data. Studies have demonstrated the low compliance rate of apps in major stores with store developer policies and the vulnerabilities in the permission systems of Android and iOS used by such apps to access personal data. Most concerns and regulations surround the data privacy of minors, and research has been done exploring the troubling data safety practices in apps targeting children aged 12 and under. To our knowledge, current literature has yet to include Teens and Young adults when exploring the influence of an app's age demographics on patterns of permission requests. The differentiation between these age demographics is essential since, despite not having reached the age of majority, teenagers are expected to be able to grant and deny access to their data. Moreover, teenagers are treated as adults under most regulatory frameworks, giving developers more data collection freedom. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the relationship between data collection practices and privacy policy consistencies of mobile applications by targeted age groups. To investigate this correlation, this study attempts to fulfil three main contributions: (1) develop a classifier to determine an app's targeted age group based on information from its app listing, (2) compare apps from Google Play to those from the App Store to explore the differences in permission requests done by apps targeting various age groups across platforms, (3) compare an app's disclosed data safety information in their app listing with their privacy policy. The research is expected to help improve regulatory frameworks and propose a categorisation system to identify targeted age groups for further research. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 01 general works, 54 computer science |
| Programme: | Computer Science BSc (56964) |
| Awards: | TScIT Best Paper Award |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/101146 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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