People with smartphones may know that free apps share private information with third parties—but few, if any, realize how often this happens.
An experiment at Carnegie Mellon University shows that when people learn exactly how many times these apps share that information they act fast to limit further sharing.
In one phase of a study that evaluated the benefits of app permission managers—software that gives people control over what sensitive information their apps can access—23 smartphone users received a daily message, or “privacy nudge,” telling them how many times information such as location, contact lists, or phone call logs had been shared.
