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Smartphone operating systems warn users when third-party applications try to access sensitive functions or data. However, all of the major smartphone platforms warn users about different application actions. To our knowledge, their selection of warnings was not grounded in user research; past research on mobile privacy has focused exclusively on the risks pertained to sharing location. To expand the scope of smartphone security and privacy research, we surveyed 3,115 smartphone users about 99 risks associated with 54 smartphone privileges. We asked participants to rate how upset they would be if given risks occurred and used this data to rank risks by levels of user concern. We then asked 41 smartphone users to discuss the risks in their own words; their responses confirmed that people find the lowest-ranked risks merely annoying but might seek legal or financial retribution for the highest-ranked risks. In order to determine the relative frequency of risks, we also surveyed the 3,115 users about experiences with "misbehaving" applications. Our ranking and frequency data can be used to guide the selection of warnings on smartphone platforms.
Felt et al. (Fri,) studied this question.