Contribution of Contextualized Security in Mobile Security Applications

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2019 in the subject Computer Science - IT-Security, , language: English, abstract: This study's aim is to check the effects of security features displays and privacy in mobile security antivirus applications and the willingness to install these applications based on the innovative contextualized approach that we are going to introduce. Twenty-four participants viewed privacy and security information for various antivirus applications which were visualized using a food labelling system that was adapted specifically for the use of privacy invasion and mobile security. Applications were displayed either contextually, where the display was split into separate screens for each security feature and applicable privacy factors for each specific component, or all together in an accumulated display. Using this innovation contextualized approach, we found users had a much better understanding of the type of access each feature of an application was requesting permission from, and helped users gain confidence in installing antivirus applications with higher security levels. Privacy invasion reduced users' willingness to install an application, however we also found users to trade some of their privacy for antivirus applications with higher levels of security.