Smart Phone Applications and Information Privacy: A comparative analytical Study

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Faculty of Arts, Helwan University

Abstract

The privacy right is one of the fundamental rights of a natural person as a
human being. It is the basis of the structure of every healthy society and is one of
the pre-existing rights of the state itself. In recent years there has been a
legislative response at different levels for the sake of this protection, and the
judiciary has followed it with a remarkable response in favour of the jurisprudence
of the private life of individuals that is of paramount importance to both the
individual and the community.
This coincided with the increasing vulnerability of the right to privacy to
the digital environment through e-mail and chat sites Networks or communication
sites, which have become a hoot of the modern era and a wide electronic space,
in which we put all the references about us and our lives, as well as our privacy.
The purpose of this study is to diagnose the reality of the work of Google Play
applications that work on the smart phone environment, especially with regard to
gathering information or allowing access to personal data and users’ information,
by identifying the nature of data and information collected or allowed access to,
monitoring the nature of the risks of using these applications.
To do so, the researcher studied and analyzed licensing agreements for
the use of 80 applications of smart phones in areas commonly used in the digital
environment, such as social networking applications, Online banks Applications,
antivirus applications, web search applications, news and press applications,
educational applications, web applications, travel and tourism applications. The
study submitted recommendations to help avoid exposure to the risks of new
technologies for future privacy violations.
The study adapted the comparative descriptive analytical approach to
study and analyze the data collected or requested to be accessed by smart
phone applications, in order to identify the nature of these applications, and the
nature of data collected from the beneficiaries.

The study used the checklist as the main tool for data collection. The
study focused mainly on Android operating system as it was highly spread
compared to other systems. The study concluded a number of findings and
recommendations while dealing with the digital environment



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