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“Money makes the world go around”: Identifying Barriers to Better Privacy in Children’s Apps From Developers’ Perspectives

Published: 07 May 2021 Publication History

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.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary Materials (3411764.3445599_supplementalmaterials.zip)

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          cover image ACM Conferences
          CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
          May 2021
          10862 pages
          ISBN:9781450380966
          DOI:10.1145/3411764
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          Published: 07 May 2021

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          Author Tags

          1. age-appropriate design
          2. children’s apps
          3. children’s privacy
          4. developer practices
          5. developer values

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          • RETCON: Red Teaming the Internet Connected Internet of Things, under PETRAS 2 (EPSRC)
          • EPSRC: Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security
          • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council: ReEnTrust

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