<div dir="ltr">The paper is a must-read for anyone trying to understand scope design of APIs as well as those that would design registries or trust frameworks to guide users that are considering signing up for an new app or web service. - Adrian<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><div><br><div><br><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05661" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.<wbr>05661</a><br><br><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">arXiv:1608.05661 (*cross-listing*)</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 07:36:11 GMT (2469kb,D)</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Title: The Curious Case of the PDF Converter that Likes Mozart: Dissecting and</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"> Mitigating the Privacy Risk of Personal Cloud Apps</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Authors: Hamza Harkous, Rameez Rahman, Bojan Karlas, Karl Aberer</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Categories: cs.CY cs.HC</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Journal-ref: Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Volume 2016, Issue</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"> 4, Pages 123-143, ISSN (Online) 2299-0984</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">DOI: 10.1515/popets-2016-0032</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">\\</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"> Third party apps that work on top of personal cloud services such as Google</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Drive and Dropbox, require access to the user's data in order to provide some</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">functionality. Through detailed analysis of a hundred popular Google Drive apps</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">from Google's Chrome store, we discover that the existing permission model is</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">quite often misused: around two thirds of analyzed apps are over-privileged,</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">i.e., they access more data than is needed for them to function. In this work,</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">we analyze three different permission models that aim to discourage users from</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">installing over-privileged apps. In experiments with 210 real users, we</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">discover that the most successful permission model is our novel ensemble method</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">that we call Far-reaching Insights. Far-reaching Insights inform the users</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">about the data-driven insights that apps can make about them (e.g., their</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">topics of interest, collaboration and activity patterns etc.) Thus, they seek</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">to bridge the gap between what third parties can actually know about users and</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">users perception of their privacy leakage. The efficacy of Far-reaching</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Insights in bridging this gap is demonstrated by our results, as Far-reaching</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">Insights prove to be, on average, twice as effective as the current model in</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">discouraging users from installing over-privileged apps. In an effort for</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">promoting general privacy awareness, we deploy a publicly available privacy</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">oriented app store that uses Far-reaching Insights. Based on the knowledge</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">extracted from data of the store's users (over 115 gigabytes of Google Drive</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">data from 1440 users with 662 installed apps), we also delineate the ecosystem</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">for third-party cloud apps from the standpoint of developers and cloud</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">providers. Finally, we present several general recommendations that can guide</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px">other future works in the area of privacy for the cloud.</span><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12.8px"></span><br><br><br></font></span></div></div></div></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><br><div dir="ltr">Adrian Gropper MD<span style="font-size:11pt"></span><br><br><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">PROTECT YOUR FUTURE - RESTORE Health Privacy!</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><br>HELP us fight for the right to control personal health data.</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"></span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><br>DONATE:
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