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Previous studies have demonstrated that privacy issues in mobile apps often stem from the integration of third-party libraries (TPLs). To shed light on factors that contribute to these issues, we investigate the privacy-related configuration choices available to and made by Android app developers who incorporate the Facebook Android SDK and Facebook Audience Network SDK in their apps. We compile these Facebook SDKs' privacy-related settings and their defaults. Employing a multi-method approach that integrates static and dynamic analysis, we analyze more than 6,000 popular apps to determine whether the apps incorporate Facebook SDKs and, if so, whether and how developers modify settings. Finally, we assess how these settings align with the privacy practices that developers disclose in the apps’ privacy labels and policies. We observe widespread inconsistencies between practices and disclosures in popular apps. These inconsistencies often stem from privacy settings, including a substantial number of cases in which apps retain default settings over alternatives that offer greater privacy. We observe fewer possible compliance issues in potentially child-directed apps, but issues persist even in these apps. We discuss remediation strategies that SDK and TPL providers could employ to help developers, particularly developers with fewer resources who rely heavily on SDKs. Our recommendations include aligning default privacy settings with data minimization principles and other conservative practices and making privacy-related SDK information both easier to find and harder to miss.
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Towards Privacy-Preserving Social-Media SDKs on Android
Integration of third-party SDKs are essential in the development of mobile apps. However, the rise of in-app privacy threat against mobile SDKs — called cross-library data harvesting (XLDH), targets social media/platform SDKs (called social SDKs) that handles rich user data. Given the widespread integration of social SDKs in mobile apps, XLDH presents a significant privacy risk, as well as raising pressing concerns regarding legal compliance for app developers, social media/platform stakeholders, and policymakers. The emerging XLDH threat, coupled with the increasing demand for privacy and compliance in line with societal expectations, introduces unique challenges that cannot be addressed by existing protection methods against privacy threats or malicious code on mobile platforms. In response to the XLDH threats, in our study, we generalize and define the concept of privacypreserving social SDKs and their in-app usage, characterize fundamental challenges for combating the XLDH threat and ensuring privacy in design and utilization of social SDKs. We introduce a practical, clean-slate design and end-to-end systems, called PESP, to facilitate privacy-preserving social SDKs. Our thorough evaluation demonstrates its satisfactory effectiveness, performance overhead and practicability for widespread adoption.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2330265
- PAR ID:
- 10595215
- Publisher / Repository:
- USENIX Security Symposium
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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- The DOI is not currently available.
