Android Permissions Remystified: A Field Study on Contextual Integrity

We instrumented the Android platform to collect data re-garding how often and under what circumstances smart-phone applications access protected resources regulated by permissions. We performed a 36-person field study to explore the notion of “contextual integrity, ” i.e., how often applications access protected resources when users are not expecting it. Based on our collection of 27M data points and exit interviews with participants, we exam-ine the situations in which users would like the ability to deny applications access to protected resources. At least 80 % of our participants would have preferred to prevent at least one permission request, and overall, they stated a desire to block over a third of all requests. Our findings pave the way for future systems to automatically deter-mine the situations in which users would want to be con-fronted with security decisions.