Current understanding of mobile apps privacy is mostly based on studies conducted in markets with the highest penetration of Internet-connected mobile devices among the general population, such as the US. However, such studies may not represent well the mobile apps privacy situation in the rest of the world. For example, China and India have a lower penetration, but a higher number of mobile Internet users than the US, making them notable markets. To give an idea of how mobile privacy may be differently affected in other countries, we analyze the 100 most popular iOS and Android apps in India and China, and compare them with the US. Key findings from our analysis show that China and India have a worse overall privacy situation than the US, and that China has a worse overall privacy situation than India.
The dataset is no longer available. Please see the technical report below for more details.