"You can lock it down and say that this wrapped app will never be able to access certain permissions," Enck said. Such applications will have their own cookie stores to foil tracking by advertising services, such as Doubleclick. Because about 8 percent of all mobile apps are actually just a way of viewing functionality on the Web, through the WebView component, those applications can be easily wrapped, according to the researchers. To do this, NativeWrap turns a URL into an application. In addition, the application defaults to Internet-only permissions, thus limiting the amount of information leaked to developers.
The NCSU's NativeWrap, which was presented at the 7th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WISEC) in late July, adds a number of privacy enhancements, including an isolated cookie store to prevent tracking across Web sites by advertising networks and enforcement of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. Appthority defines risky behavior as the collection of location information and device identifiers, the allowing of in-app purchases, or the accessing of the contacts database or the user's calendar.
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Paid applications were not much more respectful of their users' privacy: 87 percent of iOS and 78 percent of Android apps risked users' privacy and security. Ninety-nine of the top 100 free mobile applications on both Android and iOS had at least one risky behavior, according to application-reputation firm Appthority's Summer 2014 App Reputation Report. A study released in February by McAfee found that 82 percent of applications tracked their users. Numerous studies have found that applications routinely use unnecessary permissions to collect data on users. "Permissions are determined by you, the user." "You can go to any Web site that you want to turn into an app and create your own custom version that can be installed to your phone," he said. Because many applications just add a user interface around a Web application, the user should have equivalent functionality for many wrapped apps, said William Enck, assistant professor in the department of computer science at North Carolina State University.
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Dubbed NativeWrap, the technology allows Web pages to be wrapped in code and make them appear as a mobile application, but with user-controlled privacy. Now, a research group at North Carolina State University hopes to give the average user a third option. Most applications aggressively eavesdrop on their users, from monitoring their online habits through the device identifier to tracking their movements in the real world via location information.
The binary choice has left most users ignoring permission warnings and sacrificing personal data.
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Yoav FOn a mobile application, users typically have a single choice to protect their privacy: install the application or not.
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