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Article summary:
1. This paper explores how Android apps are able to circumvent the Android permissions system and leak user data without permission.
2. The authors use a custom-built Google Play scraper to download and test apps, and reverse engineer them to uncover the mechanisms they are using.
3. They find that apps are using covert channels, side-channels, and other deceptive practices to access users' private data without consent, which raises legal and ethical concerns.
Article analysis:
The article is generally reliable in its reporting of the research conducted by Reardon et al., as it accurately summarizes their findings and provides evidence for their claims. However, there are some potential biases in the article that should be noted.
First, the article does not provide any counterarguments or alternative perspectives on the issue of app circumvention of Android permissions systems. It is possible that there may be legitimate reasons why an app would need to access certain data without permission (e.g., for debugging purposes), but these are not explored in the article.
Second, while the authors do note that Google has announced plans to address many of the issues identified by Reardon et al., they do not mention any potential risks associated with upgrading to Android Q (e.g., compatibility issues with older devices). This could lead readers to believe that upgrading is risk-free when this may not be the case.
Finally, while the article does provide evidence for its claims (e.g., number of downloads for apps using certain SDKs), it does not provide any evidence for its assertion that “privacy is a luxury good”—a claim which could be seen as promoting a particular point of view rather than providing an objective analysis of the situation at hand.