A survey on the evolution of privacy enforcement on smartphones and the road ahead

With the increasing proliferation of smartphones, enforcing privacy of smartphone users becomes evermore important. Nowadays, one of the major privacy challenges is the tremendous amount of permissions requested by applications, which can significantly invade users’ privacy, often without their knowledge. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of approaches that can be used to report on applications’ permission usage, tune permission access, contain sensitive information, and nudge users towards more privacy-conscious behavior. We discuss key shortcomings of privacy enforcement on smartphones so far and identify suitable actions for the future.