Smartphone Spying: Uncovering Hidden Dangers

The smartphone’s potent dependency, hyper-connectivity and distracting habits are changing the world at a rapid pace by tracking movement locations or extracting private contact data and ultimately impacting personal privacy. Attention-grabbing stimuli, surveillance ability, software applications (apps) and user practices associated with the smartphone have been presented as evidence of growing concern as causes for privacy erosion. Based on my review and analysis of the limited scholarly discussion available of this new but fast-developing technology, it is my opinion that apps are exploiting smartphone features to unknowingly rob users of their data by assembling travel patterns and viewing search behaviors. Three main theories shroud the causes of dependency and developing user habits which uncover certain reasons (simplicity and impetuses of the device’s functions and features) that legitimizes the enormous acceptance of smartphones even with the risk of privacy loss. The multifaceted smartphone coupled with the speed of change and acceptance has kept researchers and privacy advocates at bay. However, the discovery of hidden surveillance activities and signs of academia’s attention to smartphone security issues is promising. As the mobile industry makes modifications to enable user choice not-to-track or collect data, the scope of data loss would be minimized. In this thesis, I am proposing the smartphone surveillance model which encompasses habits, surveillance and choice evolution with a focus on privacy loss. The proposed surveillance model and following synthesis implies that by integrating the major posture of three theories, which collectively address manipulative software and smartphone user processing fluency, the need for explicit user choice is exposed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Liberal Studies

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Liberal Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Toledo

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Kwapich, Sally J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Srinivasan, Sumitra

• Information Technology
• Legal Studies
• Mass Communications
• Multimedia Communications
• Technology
• Information Systems
• Communication
• smartphone
• privacy loss
• human-computer interaction
• mobile computing
• smartphone addiction
• apps

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1363858931

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:toledo1363858931