As social networking takes to the mobile world, smartphone apps provide users with ever-changing ways to interact with each other. Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of apps have entered the market offering end-to-end encryption, self-destructing messages, or some degree of anonymity. However, little work thus far has examined the properties they offer. To this end, this paper presents a taxonomy of 18 of these apps: we first look at the features they promise in their appeal to broaden their reach and focus on 8 of the more popular ones. We present a technical evaluation, based on static and dynamic analysis, and identify a number of gaps between the claims and reality of their promises.
@article{arxiv.1510.04083,
title = {Experimental Analysis of Popular Smartphone Apps Offering Anonymity, Ephemerality, and End-to-End Encryption},
author = {Lucky Onwuzurike and Emiliano De Cristofaro},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.04083},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
A preliminary version of this paper appears in the Proceedings of the 2016 NDSS Workshop on Understanding and Enhancing Online Privacy (UEOP). This is the full version