Provenance Navigator: Towards More Usable Privacy and Data Management Strategies for Smart Apps

Billions of people have embraced numerous smart apps (applications) for browsing, chatting, emailing, entertainment, fitness, navigation, shopping, social-networking, transportation, and many other activities, with a notion to make their day-to-day life easy and better. Smart apps like TikTok, Uber, Facebook, Google Maps, etc., simply direct users to accept their data policy if they are willing to get their services free of cost. Typically, these apps providers bank on data collected from the users for generating revenue, which is equivalent to a compulsive invasion of the users’ privacy. Further, data usage policies are apps provider-centric therefore, user-friendly control mechanisms to restrict the collection and usage of sensitive data are highly demanded by end-users (particularly, for the countries that have not enacted specific legislation for users’ data protection). In the paper, we present a study of users’ data collected by popular smart apps along with the existing privacy and data management mechanisms provided by their app providers and conduct an online survey to collect public opinion towards the privacy policies and data collection done by smart apps providers. We propose a conceptual model of Provenance Navigator that can improve the transparency of data collection and usage by a smart app. Finally, we provide some recommendations based on the survey findings to improve the usability of smart apps’ privacy and data management mechanisms to grow the awareness of the user.