Research Article: Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem (Preprint)

The following research article (version 3) was shared on arXiv.
Title
Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem
Authors
Reuben Binns
University of Oxford
Ulrik Lyngs
University of Oxford
Max Van Kleek
University of Oxford
Jun Zhao
University of Oxford
Timothy Libert
University of Oxford
Nigel Shadbolt
University of Oxford
Source
via arXiv
October 18, 2018
Abstract

Third party tracking allows companies to identify users and track their behaviour across multiple digital services. This paper presents an empirical study of the prevalence of third-party trackers on 959,000 apps from the US and UK Google Play stores. We find that most apps contain third party tracking, and the distribution of trackers is long-tailed with several highly dominant trackers accounting for a large portion of the coverage. The extent of tracking also differs between categories of apps; in particular, news apps and apps targeted at children appear to be amongst the worst in terms of the number of third party trackers associated with them. Third party tracking is also revealed to be a highly trans-national phenomenon, with many trackers operating in jurisdictions outside the EU. Based on these findings, we draw out some significant legal compliance challenges facing the tracking industry

Direct to Full Text Article (9 pages; PDF)(preprint)
UPDATE: October 23, 2018 This preprint is discussed in the Financial Times article, “How smartphone apps track users and share data” (subscribers only or via library database)

Filed under: Data Files, Journal Articles, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users