Permissions Explorer investigates the privacy implications of granting various device permissions to social media applications.
Vision
To develop research and trusted tooling that explores how device owners might be exposing sensitive data from mobile devices without realizing it.
Goals
The project aims to
- Develop technology that catalogs which data is directly exposed to apps via device permissions, and which data emerges from the aggregation of the raw information.
- Produce research that explains the privacy implications of this data collection, demonstrating to users how apps can use seemingly mundane permissions to learn surprising things about users.
Why This Matters
Our phones are essentially surveillance bricks that go with us everywhere, collecting massive amounts of personal data. Through the app permissions framework, we can control which apps have access to our data, but we cannot control the use of that data. For example, once a social media app has access to our camera roll, it can use the photos, videos, and associated metadata like timestamps, location, and file name, however it wants.
Advancements in phone compute power and artificial intelligence have drastically expanded the possibilities of what companies can infer from our data. In the US, most of our data and any inferences made from it can in turn be sold to data brokers.
We believe that all people, no matter their technical expertise, have the right to see what app developers can see and to understand the kinds of inferences that can be made from their data.
Who Can Benefit
Permissions Explorer serves
- Researchers in the digital privacy and digital rights space.
- Consumers seeking to understand what data is shown to mobile apps.
Get Involved
Reach out to us at asml@cyber.harvard.edu or zrobert@cyber.harvard.edu to explore collaborations.
News
Team
Sarah Radway, PhD Student
Neeti Sivakumar, Research Assistant
Matthew Soto, Research Assistant