"Money makes the world go around'': Identifying Barriers to Better
Privacy in Children's Apps From Developers' Perspectives
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.14596v1
- Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2021 15:27:55 GMT
- Title: "Money makes the world go around'': Identifying Barriers to Better
Privacy in Children's Apps From Developers' Perspectives
- Authors: Anirudh Ekambaranathan and Jun Zhao and Max Van Kleek
- Abstract summary: The industry for children's apps is thriving at the cost of children's privacy.
These apps routinely disclose children's data to multiple data trackers and ad networks.
We used a mixed-methods approach to investigate why this is happening and how developers might change their practices.
- Score: 28.40988446675355
- License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
- Abstract: The industry for children's apps is thriving at the cost of children's
privacy: these apps routinely disclose children's data to multiple data
trackers and ad networks. As children spend increasing time online, such
exposure accumulates to long-term privacy risks. In this paper, we used a
mixed-methods approach to investigate why this is happening and how developers
might change their practices. We base our analysis against 5 leading data
protection frameworks that set out requirements and recommendations for data
collection in children's apps. To understand developers' perspectives and
constraints, we conducted 134 surveys and 20 semi-structured interviews with
popular Android children's app developers. Our analysis revealed that
developers largely respect children's best interests; however, they have to
make compromises due to limited monetisation options, perceived harmlessness of
certain third-party libraries, and lack of availability of design guidelines.
We identified concrete approaches and directions for future research to help
overcome these barriers.
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