A team of researchers has developed an Android app to help users better understand when their location is being tracked, which happens more often than they think.
“All apps that have access to locations must request permission from the Android platform” stated via email Janne Lindqvist [cq], who led the research project. “The problem is that users do not pay attention to these disclosures by default”.
Android phones display a flashing icon when GPS apps try to access a user's location. But few users realize this or understand what the image is telling them, the researchers found. The app they developed is designed to fix this bug by making it clearer to users when other apps are accessing their location data. They tried several methods, including a flashing message on the device's screen, "Your location has been shared with [app name]."
