Privacy Management for Mobile Platforms -- A Review of Concepts and Approaches

The still rising popularity of modern mobile phones results in an increased demand for manifold applications for these devices. As Android OS supports the development and usage of third-party software greatly, there are more and more developers for this platform. However, many of those applications handle private data grossly negligent which immediately leads to serious privacy concerns. To make matters worse, the current Android permission rules are much too coarse and incomprehensible from the average user´s perspective. But even if s/he understands the meaning of the permissions, s/he must either accept all of them or waive the application. Therefore we review concepts and approaches towards effective privacy management for mobile platforms. All this is discussed based on the prevailing key players in the mobile market, namely Apple, RIM, Microsoft and Google. As this work has been initiated by Google we mainly concentrated on Android-based concepts towards customizable privacy management approaches. As a result of our review and taking into account current initiatives and trends in the market, we come up with a novel approach, an implementation architecture and a prototype.