Mar 28, 2024 | Updated: 11:35 AM EDT

Android App Privacy Concerns

Feb 06, 2014 06:33 PM EST

How can Android mobile users trust apps and privacy? Android user install is increasing the numbers of apps from developers. The growing concern of today is what application developers are doing with this personal information. Android platform security is crucial. Over the past year, security protection for Android devices has been a significant priority for users.

Practicing risk management can prevent Android users from the vulnerabilities of emerging security threats and risks. Data security and breaches are now a well known fact. The large number of data breaches still exists with little public knowledge. A great majority of such attacks can be prevented through implementing basic security measures.  It may cost an organization up to millions of dollars to protect all their data.

Iubenda / Google

Privacy should always be important. Mobility and innovation with Android global presence brings pressure with success in organizations is forcing CEOs to make more and quicker decisions on these areas. To build trust, management teams must therefore support thorough privacy concerns, just as they would expect it themselves. Innovation is closely tied into trust as a key characteristic. Because of the risk involved, both for the organization and its employees it is pretty much weighing the risk against results. The process is complex.

Norton Mobile Security’s latest update brings with it a new consumer privacy feature. Using its wealth of data from Norton™ Mobile Insight (the same source as mobilesecurity.com’s very own AppView library), Norton Mobile Security now checks apps during install, allowing users to verify whether an app offers any potential risks to their personal information prior to use.

The way users check out products and services is new. Users are used to looking online for recommendations, using data to solve questions and more. Mobile technology requires developers to introduce a variety of apps to the marketplace. According to Symantec, the company analyzed more than 50,000 new or updated Android apps that were introduced to Google Play during May 2013, a number that reflects the past year's trend for enthusiasm on the part of app developers to embrace Google's mobile platform.

Norton states, Android's open nature offers a vast number of potential beta testers, and this is a huge advantage for Android app developers over the iOS platform. However, another consequence of its open source infrastructure is a more fragmented ecosystem. With literally hundreds of different devices that developers need to take into account when creating a new app, the process of designing a new UI (user interface), and bug-fixing for multiple component and device scenarios is a complex one, to say the least.

Norton Mobile Security has introduced a new Privacy Scan feature that checks apps during install and provides users with information regarding whether the app presents a potential risk to user privacy, if it contains greyware or other malicious content.  The system that analyzes every app in more than 200 app stores.

Real Time Analytics