Using the Middle to Meddle with Mobile

Researchers and mobile users have little visibility into the network traffic generated by mobile devices and have poor control over how, when, and where that traffic is sent and handled. This paper presents Meddle, a platform that leverages VPNs and software middleboxes to improve transparency and control for Internet traffic from mobile systems. Meddle provides a practical way to interpose on all of a device’s Internet traffic, while providing clear incentives, privacy guarantees, and ease of deployment to end users. We discuss the design and implementation of our system, and evaluate its effectiveness with measurements from an IRB-approved user measurement study. We demonstrate the potential of this platform using case studies of applications built atop Meddle; namely, controlling privacy leaks and detecting ISP interference with Internet traffic.