Personal Data Privacy on Smartphones

Abstract

With smartphones proliferating, the user’s personal data contained within them are at high risk of being compromised by applications that are installed within them by the users themselves. This research attempts to gain some insights into what level of detection mechanism can be put in place by means of an HTTP/HTTPS proxy that would filter out and notify users of any such violations that are taking place. Privacy issues relating to data leakage from applications installed on an Android smartphone are identified and presented by means of the external HTTP/HTTPS proxy. It is demonstrated that we are able to detect and prevent the violation to some extent. Weaknesses that exist in this particular approach are found and hence suggested that this approach is best used in concert with other existing technologies and methods. The research focuses on the Android smartphone operating system platform. However, the concepts in the research are not specific to this OS and can be broadly applied.