Högskolan i Skövde

The installation of bloatwares in smartphones has over the years been increasing. By having bloatwares installed on the devices it has develop monopoly for the original equipment manufacturer, but at the same time it has create problems for consumers and privacy issue. The aim of this research was to investigate in five different original equipment manufacturers devices, on how they protect users against personally identifiable information leaking from bloatware and which personally identifiable information is collected; processed; sent by bloatware with or without any interaction. The method that was selected for this study was to do an action study, where the author experimented with five different devices (Sony, Samsung, Google Pixel, Apple, Oneplus) and different software programs. To be able to conduct the data from the devices, there was a strategy process where the approach was both dynamic analysis and static analysis. The results showed that that all devices that was part of this case study are leaking some type of personally identifiable information, due to poor security or that failed to protect against leaking personally identifiable information. Furthermore, the Android operating system that was part of this study seems to be the most optimal operating system in terms of monitoring the users. Since they were transmitting out a request every minute to the same address.