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dc.contributorDepartment of Electronic and Information Engineeringen_US
dc.creatorWang, Shucheng-
dc.identifier.urihttps://theses.lib.polyu.edu.hk/handle/200/9566-
dc.languageEnglishen_US
dc.publisherHong Kong Polytechnic University-
dc.rightsAll rights reserveden_US
dc.titleYAPI : an automated location privacy benchmarking tool for smartphone usersen_US
dcterms.abstractThe popularity of smartphones has led to the prevalence of location-aware apps. They access users' location to provide personalized and location-dependent services. Albeit its wide use, users' location information can be accessed by any third-party apps arbitrarily with little protection, which is threatening our location privacy seriously. The main problem studied in this dissertation is to design a metric that can benchmark the privacy awareness of those third-party apps which access user location without impairing any apps' normal services and users' conveniences. All location access requests on Android smartphones will be analyzed first by an "interceptor" [9], which is implemented as an Xposed module. The analysis is to infer whether these location accessing requests abuse user privacy or are genuinely used to provide location-based services. To achieve this, we use five cloned Android simulators to launch the same activities of the app synchronously. These simulators share the same user data for the app and are only different in their location provided to it. By measuring the difference of the server response after the location request of same app activities, we can identify the location abuse cases with high confidence. To ensure the analysis covers most use cases of the app and truly reflects how average users experience these location access requests, we also propose activity usage weight estimation. Our last contribution is to use the above benchmarking platform to evaluate top apps from Google Play Store with different developers, categories, and regions. This serves as a state-of-the-art report of attitude and actions taken by major developers on location privacy.en_US
dcterms.extent12, 107 pages : color illustrationsen_US
dcterms.isPartOfPolyU Electronic Thesesen_US
dcterms.issued2018en_US
dcterms.educationalLevelM.Sc.en_US
dcterms.educationalLevelAll Masteren_US
dcterms.LCSHHong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertationsen_US
dcterms.LCSHLocation-based servicesen_US
dcterms.LCSHApplication softwareen_US
dcterms.accessRightsrestricted accessen_US

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://theses.lib.polyu.edu.hk/handle/200/9566