How Much Do They Know? A Study on Mobile Phone Information Use

Smartphone privacy is a growing concern around the world; smartphone applications routinely take personal information from our phones and monetize it for their own profit. Worse, they're doing it legally. The Terms of Service allow companies to use this information to market, promote, and sell personal data. Most users seem to be either unaware of it, or unconcerned by it. This has negative implications for the future of privacy, particularly as the idea of smart home technology becomes a reality. If this is what privacy looks like now, with only one major type of smart device on the market, what will the future hold, when the smart home systems come into play. In order to examine this question, I investigated how much awareness/knowledge smartphone users of a specific demographic (millennials aged 18-25) knew about their smartphone's data and where it goes. I wanted three questions answered: - For what purposes do millennials use their smartphones? - What do they know about smartphone privacy and security? - How will this affect the future of privacy? To accomplish this, I gathered information using a distributed survey to millennials attending Arizona State University. Using statistical analysis, I exposed trends for this demographic, discovering that there isn't a lack of knowledge among millennials; most are aware that smartphone apps can collect and share data and many of the participants are not comfortable with the current state of smartphone privacy. However, more than half of the study participants indicated that they never read an app's Terms of Service. Due to the nature of the privacy vs. convenience argument, users will willingly agree to let apps take their personal in- formation, since they don't want to give up the convenience.