Heimdall: Illuminating the Hidden Depths of Third-Party Tracking in Android Applications

摘要

Although the problems surrounding the ubiquity of Web tracking and its risk to the privacy of online users have attracted public attention in recent years, efforts to counter their adverse effects and protect the privacy and personal data of users, either through counter-tracking solutions or legislation, have done little to stem the tide. This problem is especially pronounced in the mobile world, where the generally opaque nature of mobile platforms prevents effective research to ascertain the nature and extent of third-party tracking and protect user privacy. For this reason, we present Heimdall, an Android Web traffic measurement tool designed to allow users and researchers to shed light on the inner workings of mobile applications and identify connections to third-party trackers that have the potential to abuse users' personal data present on their mobile devices. We demonstrate the feasibility of the concept underlying Heimdall by using it to monitor the network traffic of 450 Android applications, mapping out their connections to 3,453 unique hosts. Analysing this dataset reveals that 70.9% of monitored apps communicate with known tracking and advertising hosts, highlighting the prevalence of third-party tracking in mobile applications.