Study on Content Rating and Security Permissions of Mobile Applications in Google Play

Transcription

1 Study on Content Rating and Security Permissions of Mobile Applications in Google Play Abstract The aim of this paper is to make a study on content rating and security permissions of mobile applications used by the online platform Google Play. In our days many questions are raised regarding children and mobile applications. In this sense we addressed questions trough a survey to children and adolescents, in order to obtain relevant for an analysis about the knowledge of content rating and permissions of applications. This study implies also collecting information directly from the market platform using an analytics application developed by authors. The obtained data was used to analyze the importance of content rating and security permissions in mobile games and their impact on the children. We correlate the survey data providing perspective of the young users, with the real data and statistics collected from the mobile applications market. Keywords content rating, security permissions, mobile games, mobile applications, youth survey, Google Play I. INTRODUCTION Games do not have a very distant history; their beginning was around 1950, when simple games and simulations were designed in academics. These were considered to be part of a science research [1]. Moreover, they gained a greater popularity since 70s and 80s when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public [2]. Games can be accessed from almost any electronic console, such as the smart TV which provides a possibility for multiple uses such as music, games, video chat and other, computer, laptop, tablets, smartphones and others [1-3]. Today, all these devices are easily reachable by children. Games begin to occupy time and many studies are showing that these take a considering part in childhood [4]. Games take part of life and according to Kaiser Foundation, children in America play more than one hour per day [5]. The most important devices that are used for playing these games and that parents often offer to their children are the mobile phones, the smart phones. These have the ability to offer to the young generation the all opportunities to choose these games and to use them in as often they want, without a strict supervision. Important to note is that most of the games contain scenes of violence that may have different negative effects, like described by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Children start to become overly involved and sometimes obsessed to play video games. These create mostly problems and the time spent for playing lead to poor social skills, school-work, overweight, aggressive thoughts and behavior [15]. Whether it is a game on smartphone or on any other available device, children and teens expect video games to be exciting. The reviews and the rating accorded to each game are also very important. These can be achieved through online paying direct on the different game platforms, like Google Play or they can be played online, on other platforms, like Facebook. Because of a large time spent while playing games, children and adolescents become highly captivated by them. Other effects of playing video games are that children fail to develop their social skills, intellectual skill, and hobbies and obtain usually lower grades in school [6]. Aggressiveness and bad behavior are other side effects. Another important aspect of games is the amount of time that young people are spending playing videogames is steadily [11]. There are many other studies that are done in order to observe the effects of games, therefore James Newman writes in his book about Videogames that these are transferring to children the reflex skills of the characters acting there [7]. Parents are choosing mostly for preschool children what games to play, but with the passing of age children begin to gain courage to choose the games themselves depending on the TV commercial, advice of friend and others. In these cases, parents often do not realize what children play on these devices. Games can be downloaded on any device and can be used in easy conditions without requiring any additional knowledge [8]. Children can access these without being informed about the rating, maturity or needed permissions of the applications. One of the biggest and most common problems of the rating system is that even the parents do not look into details of the offered game to children. There is an increasing necessity in terms of video games classification, in order to be more visible and accurate regarding the content of these. For children under three years there is no classification for video games because for this age it is not recommended for parents to let children to play video games. Worldwide there are many types of video games rating systems, as we have: in Europa PEGI (Pan European Game Information) system, in USA, Canada, and Mexico ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) system, in Japan CERO (Computer Entertainment Rating Organization) system, in Australia ACB (Australian Classification Board) system, etc. The PEGI (Pan European Game Information) system and ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) system provide an accurate classification of content rating for DVD s and video games. Regarding mobile video game, the content rating classification is not defined in a similar manner. This classification remains at a choice of each market developer. Living in a world in which children have access to all electronic devices and most of the online platforms only guide the users in terms of content system rating, most of the games are played by the inappropriate target.

2 Change of paradigm is welcomed in terms of video games. These can be accessed anywhere, anytime, and by anyone. Therefore children have access to unlimited games and applications market in which the distribution and scoping rules of the content are unclear, with low visibility and signification and are mostly advisory. Content rating is used by the online platforms as a measure of security, which remains accessible to the online platform user, for protecting children from applications that are not suitable for their age. II. OBIECTIVES The developed study aims to analyze the existing rating system management of reading and filtering data s from Google Play platform, in terms of content of mobile games played online or downloaded for offline play on mobile devices. The actual content rating does not help too much parents and most of users do not know what maturity rate means. Therefore, we aim at proposing recommendations to improve and unify the existing content rating of mobile games distribution marketplaces. In this sense an application was developed and used for collecting and analyzing games from Google Play. This application extracts information regarding the content rating, keywords of the application description and needed permissions of Google platforms. The information is used for analyzing the level of knowledge of application users about the classification of these and also if this classification is done properly according to the content of the application. The users of the different applications should be aware about how these have to be chosen in order to have a nonnegative effect upon them. Therefore, another objective of this study is to collect information about how well the meaning of content rating is understood. A survey is applied in order to collect these inputs of the study. III. RELATED WORK Due to the fact that the majority of the young players tend to use inappropriate games according to their ages, rating systems such as PEGI rating system or ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) rating process have been created [9,10]. In other studies regarding knowing of the content rating, the teenagers were asked if they recognize the content rating significance and more than 50% do not know what content rating means. The PEGI system create a rating system indicating the age (3, 7, 12, 16, 18 years) and the ESRB use the words (e.g. C- early childhood, E everyone, T teen, etc). In different international studies the adolescents were asked if they played games for adults and more than 60% respond positively [11]. This study shows the real challenge for accurate classification and to be more effective and efficiently in order to awareness parents and different users in such a way that children do not play games which do not correspond to their age. Bruce D. Homer in Gender and player characteristics in video game play of preadolescent has done a study in SUA Northeastern on children ages 10 to 15 years. This one shows that also a difference between boys and girls occur. Girls are preferring games that describe virtual world and life instead of what boys usually prefer. They prefer mostly game types like fighting, sports and first person shooters [12]. The actual system ratings used by Google Play, App Store or Amazon do nothing else than to provide some help mostly parents and adults in choosing age specific.applications. The major problem is that at the moment of download of an application, this information is not visibly available and these cannot be used by most of the user as security measurement. One of the studies of Felt and others showed us that approximately 17% from those who use applications are really checking the permissions and other details of these and only 3% of these do really understand what these means and what consequences they could have.[21] In fact not the classification is the main problem but when these applications are used by the inappropriate age. In terms of operating system used for smartphones the Android and ios for 2014 have 96,3% from the market [18]. According to NetMarketShare a specialized site for statistics, shows that used operating system for mobile/tablet is Android system with 52,47%, followed by ios with 38,81%, Symbian 2,79%, Java ME 2,78%, Windows Phone 2,07% and others [19]. In the first trimester of 2015 there are approximately applicaions available and until 2013 almost 50 billion applications were downloaded [20]. IV. METHODOLOGY USED In our study the different age classes of users are followed. This is done in order to show if the games or applications are used by the appropriate age category for which these were created. In this sense a survey was created. This survey is designed for children of different ages but also for teachers and parents, referring mainly to youths. The results of these surveys are used for determining the level of knowledge about the games/applications content rating. The surveys were developed after we have made a study regarding the current state of research in this domain. There have been taken into consideration also other studies that were made in other regions or countries regarding the same thematic. For example such a study was made also by E. Wartella in the study Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology. Ellen Wartella shows that from parents having children between 0 8 years, one in three parents (31%) of children in this young age group report that they are very or somehow concerned about their child s media use [16]. The same study tells that about three out of four families (73%) have a console video game player hooked up to a TV [16]. For the age between 0 8 years, nine out of ten (89%) watch TV, four in ten (43%) use a computer, three in ten (32%) play console video games, and two in ten use ipods or tablet devices (26%), play on handled gaming devices like Gameboys or PSPs (21%), or play on smartphones (21%). [16] This age is those one in which children are spending the most time with parents and are mostly influenced by them. About the time that is spend in playing video games in America, a nationally representative study found that the average American 8-to-18 years old play video games for 13.2 hours per week [17]. Necessary

3 information for developing the surveys were also collected from the actual situations that occur at children level, but also from different opinions collected from teachers and parents. All these led us to the conclusion that our survey should be relied on the background of children and should contain questions regarding the usage of technology by children, their knowledge about the content rating and the usage of the permissions required by applications related to the device they are playing with. The data was collected using two methods. On one side we developed the survey in an electronically environment and made the access to it public in different ways making use of the public online media where respondents had the opportunity to submit answers online, but there were also surveys distributed in physical format and were completed manually by those. Surveys were shared to children aged 10 to 18 with different financial and social backgrounds. The surveys were distributed in different schools in an organized manner, but they were completed also by many other children beside schools. In the survey study the methodology used followed the age of the respondents, the level of know-how of the content rating, and the level of awareness regarding the games security permissions and how this know-how helps young users in taking the decision to install and use a mobile game. Other important information present in the survey are type of the electronic device used for playing games (e.g. smartphones, tablets), the places and social aspects of playing mobile games, or type of games they prefer. In the same time with analyzing the surveys another study is performed over the mobile games market (Google Play) using the market analytics application developed to collect and analyze historical and statistical data. This one is build on three directions, firstly content rating, secondly application permissions and thirdly on the keywords of the application description. The obtained information and therefore also results are considered relevant trough the fact that children were implied directly in the collection of information, but also because our developed application made use of current and updated data directly from the game market. The whole amount of data that was collected, was analyzed and synthetized in charts using the excel tool. Each of the results was interpreted according to their type and category in order to build a valid results and conclusion. The perspective of this study is to make the parents and the mobile users aware about the high level of the risks in the games that are installed and played without to be taken in consideration the content rating of applications or games. V. MARKET ANALYTICS TOOL DESCRIPTION The mobile market analytics application is developed in C# language and comprises several libraries used in accessing and reading information from the Google Play platform, but also libraries that are used in analyzing the texts of descriptions, comments, and other references of the games/applications. The application was developed in order to be able to read relevant data that is used on the Google Play platform. These were applied to the study in that they are correlated to the answers given by the children in the surveys for a more consistent result. To obtain more accurate output of the study, top 250 applications/games are collected from Google Play platform through the developed application. These comprise also applications that are mentioned by the children in the collected surveys. The application collects information that is saved in a local database. The most important tables are: a table contains the categories of the applications and additional information, a table containing the applications with name, description, content rating, provider, category, type and a table that contains the permissions of each collected application. Additional tables were used in order to link data between them, as presented in Fig.1. The application uses the information from the database tables according to different categories and types. The table permission is a standalone table in the application. These tables were used to store the corresponding information which is used also in correlation to the survey. Fig. 1. The application data structures The application has been used to collect data from 2012 so the evolution of the mobile games on Google Play in the last couple of years can be analyzed. Content rating, permissions requests, number of comments, number of downloads and the position in the Top 250 games can be analyzed based on their evolution in time and the present situation. This application is developed in order to obtain information only from Google Play, but in future perspective it could be adapted to collect relevant information also from other application platforms like itunes. We considered developing this application firstly for the Google Play platform, because for now a larger percent of the used devices run Android as operating system. This operating system gained a large ground after it was implemented in devices, on smartphones and tablets market and all this because it had a friendly appearance. A large amount of features were implemented in short time. Google Play is the official platform that contains applications developed especially for this operating system and can be used on each device that runs it. Android is for now one of the used operating systems in the market and it acts competitive for iphone [18]. This is also explained in the study of International

4 Data Corporation named Smartphones Vendor Market Share, Q This study shows that in the first quarter of 2015 Samsung had 24,6% of the market share, Apple had 18,3%, Lenovo had5,6%, Huawei had 5,2%, LG Electronics had 4,6% and Other brands had 41%. We observe that many of the before mentioned brands but also others uses Android. A next step would be to extend the application for reading the market for Windows and ios. VI. STUDY RESULTS The survey was completed by more than 260 adolescents and pre-adolescents between 10 and 18 years, 64% girls and 36% boys. They had to answer questions regarding the knowledge about the required permission of the used applications/games and their content rating. More than 74% confirm the knowledge about the content rating but more than and 26% confirm that they do not know what mean content rating. Regarding choosing of the games according content rating 72% recognize that they do not take into consideration the content rating when they are choosing these applications/games and 28% do not take into consideration the content rating when choosing applications/games. Regarding the required access permissions of the applications, from the respondents aged 10 to 13, only 31% read and use them as a decision and over 36% do not read the details of permissions, 23% do not read the permissions but install the application because they need it and 10% read the permissions but do not what they mean as in Fig. 2. In the second category, respondents aged 14 to 18, only 27% read and use them as a decision and over 31% do not read the details of permissions, 16% do not read the permissions but install the application because they need it and 26% read the permissions but do not what they mean as in Fig. 2. Regarding the preferred devices more than 76% were choosing the mobile phone for playing video games and more than 43% choose also the computer. As game category, action type was chosen by over 59%, followed by adventure type 36% chose sports 55% and more than 37% play entertainment games. A very big impact in a child s life is the free time and the activities during this time. In this sense we asked some questions. One question was regarding what they are doing in their free time with their friends together. 29% answered that they prefer to play on the computer and almost the same percentage choses the mobile phone. Another question was regarding what they are doing in their free time, but alone. For this question almost 40% answered that they like to play with the computer and almost 46% uses to play with the mobile phone. Regarding the devices they own for themselves, over 69 % recognized to have a smartphone, over 53% have laptops and over 43% have beside these also a tablet. Asked, if they have internet access in their own room, over 65% recognized to have. The chosen places are split in two categories. First category aged 10 to 13 play games in the own room over 78% and the living room 43%. The second category aged 14 to 18 play games in the own room 80% and 20 % play games in the living room. The reason of playing video games were mentioned by 78% for fun, 43% due to boredom and over 28 % choose also the reason lack of activities. Regarding if the respondents take their phones with them 78% answer that have all the time their phones with them and only 28% do not take the phone with them. Fig. 2. Permissions of applications years Fig. 3. Permissions of applications years Another important part of the study referred to a correlation between the answers that we have collected from the children and teens of different ages. Therefore we have used the same categories of age, one between 10 and 13 years and the second one between 14 and 18 years and for each age category we correlated also the boys to the girls and each gender itself. These correlation values are shown also in the figures below. Regarding the types of games they are playing we have observed that there is a very strong correlation between girls of age 10 to 13 and girls of age This means that girls starting with age of 10 tend to keep their maturity. We obtained a correlation of A very low correlation occurs between boys of age 10 to 13 and boys of age 14 to 18, a correlation of A medium correlation exists between boys and girls of ages 10 to 13, but between boys and girls of age 14 to 18 there is no one. This means that the interests in terms of played computer games are totally different. All these are shown in Fig. 4.

5 Fig. 4. Correlation regarding the played games (B Boys, G - Girls) Another correlation was made regarding what types of activities children like to do in their free time together with their friends. The same age categories were respected. Therefore we observed a strong correlation between boys and girls of age 14 to 18. This means that indeed adolescents prefer in this time to have common activities. Boys of age 10 to 13 choose in a total different way what to do with their time, therefore a very low correlation between these. Boys tend to keep their activities by passing years, a correlation of 0.62 occurs between the ages of 10 to 13 and 14 to 18, girls, on the other hand practice a change in free time activities. These can be read also in the following table in Fig. 5. Fig. 5. Correlation regarding the activities in the free time together with friends (B Boys, G - Girls) A similar correlation was made regarding the activities in the free time but alone, of children and teens of same age like before. We concluded that when boys are alone, they tend to keep their activities before and after the age of 13. We obtained a high correlation of Teens of age 14 to 18 tend also to have similar activities when they are on their own, with a medium correlation. As before children under the age of 13 have different activities in their free time. These are shown in following table in Fig.6. Fig. 7. Correlation regarding the content rating (B Boys, G - Girls) Regarding the access permissions and security of the application, there is no correlation between ages. This implies an individual action in taking this decision related to an collective opinion. The developed application collect Top 250 applications/games downloaded from Google Play, these including the applications and games collected in the surveys. We took into consideration also the permissions that each game or application needs in order to be correctly installed and to be used in an appropriate manner. The results regarding the ten most used permission requirements of games are shown in the Fig.8. These include access to the internet, network, the external and internal storage, Wi-Fi, phone state and other permissions. All other permissions, which were identified in the selected games/applications, are represented in Fig. 9. These permissions refer to the access that any application needs in order to run in a proper way on the mobile device. Therefore almost all games need internet access; many of these need access to the network state or read/write permissions on the device memory. Some fewer games require access to Wi- Fi, to the phone state or to a billing account for in-app payment. Less games need permissions like stopping background processes, mount/unmounts file system or accessing location extra commands, but a deeper study on these, showed that many of these less used permissions, but also some of the ten most used permissions are dangerous for users and expose these to risks by using them. For example games that have the billing permissions could expose the user to a known or unknown payment that can be costly. The access to the phones state could offer information about the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) code, the phone number, or other confidential information. Fig. 6. Correlation regarding the activities in the free time alone (B Boys, G - Girls) Furthermore we have concluded that regarding the classification system, the content rating, the same categories of children and teens of these ages are spitted in two. Boys and girls of age 14 to 18 tend to take in consideration the rating system, while girls of age 10 to 13 do not take these into consideration. The correlation table regarding these can be found below in Fig.7. Fig. 8. Top 10 Google Play permission requirements

6 Fig. 9. Less used Google Play permission requirements The get account permission on a game could trick the user to reveal passwords or confidential account content. Permissions like system alert window could expose the users to unpleasant or forbidden advertising. Of course there are also other dangerous permissions that are not very often used, but occur among the permissions of the most used games. These are stopping background processes permission, which can trick the user in that users do not need such permission because applications that are misbehaving can be stopped by users directly, they do not need a task killer, mount/unmounts file system permission, which should not be needed by any normal application, accessing location extra commands, which should be treated with the same caution as the GPS permission, because it assumes the same implications. Get tasks permission is also enough dangerous permission that many application require because it helps in stealing information and data. Usually this permission works together with the task killers. These permissions should usually not be needed by usual applications including games. More than that, they could indicate on a malicious intent of games and can affect children and their devices during the usage of them. [13, 14] Considering the same Top 250 mobile games their content rating information has been collected. The results are shown in the Fig.10. One of the important parts of this study is the correlation between output of the surveys and output of the application. The application provided the content rating and the permissions of the games and the surveys showed what types of games and games are played by them and on what age. In terms of most played games asked in the survey for the age between 14 to 18 years 50% of the boys answered that they play Need for Speed (Google Play rating: low maturity or 7 according to PEGI), Minecraft 38% (Google Play rating: Everyone or 3 according to PEGI) and 35% answered that they play Subway surfers (Google Play rating: Everyone or 3 according to PEGI). For the same age, more than 58% of the girls answered that they play Temple Run (Google Play rating: Everyone / low maturity or 3 / 7 according to PEGI), Subway surfers (Google Play rating: Everyone or 3 according to PEGI) and 28% of them play Angry Birds (Google Play rating: Everyone or 3 according to PEGI). Fig. 10. Content rating of searched games Boys of age 10 to 13 answered in proportion of more than 95% that they play Minecraft (Google Play rating: Everyone or 3 according to PEGI), 41% play Clash of Clans (Google Play rating: Everyone or 3 according to PEGI) and 37% play Need for Speed (Google Play rating: low maturity or 7 according to PEGI). In the surveys eleven games were given as choice and other fifteen were chosen by children filing the surveys. The chosen games in the surveys were analyzed by content rating and permissions with help of the analytics application. One important output of the study is that seven of these games having Medium Maturity as content rating are played by boys and girls between 10 to 13 years. Another important aspect is that all of these games are based on a consistent list of required permissions that including permissions that could affect the safety of the children and their devices. These aspects lead us to the idea that Google Play does not offer a very safe classification and correlation between the games, their permissions and the age they were created for. VII. CONCLUSIONS In nowadays the children are impacted seriously by the technology and much more by the video games. This study show that most of the adolescent know what means content rating of the games downloaded or played online on the Google Play platform but they do not take this in consideration when deciding to install a game. Much fewer young users know about risks of granting the security permissions required by the games they install. Therefore, a content rating more efficient is necessary to be put in place in order to minimize the risks that games are chosen wrong by the users, especially parents for children. The problem regarding children and games could become in long term a quiet dangerous game in the education of them. This problem seems to be increasingly slipped out of control by parents. If the responses that children gave regarding to the owned devices in the surveys are taken into consideration and believing them that most of them have permanently these devices upon them, especially in early ages, these can start to become dangerous for them. All devices have positive aspects in using them and can be helpful in different

7 situations, but only if they are used by children by well-defined rules that are accepted and applied by them and if parents have the strength to impose these in a friendly but serious manner. Therefore for children parents are mostly responsible to verify the level of usage of these devices and to check what applications are usually running on them in order to be aware of what permissions are applied to devices of their children and for what age each application is destined. References [1] [2] [3] [4] K. C. Olson, Children s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development, pp , 2010 [5] C. A. Anderson, W. A. Warburton, The impact of violent video games: An overview, pp [6] /Facts_for_Families_Pages/Children_and_Video_Games_Playing_with_ Violence_91.aspx [7] J. Newman, Videogames second edition, New York, 2013 [8] J. Juul, A Casual Revolution Reinventing video games and their players, 2010 [9] [10] [11] D. Griffiths, Education and Health, pp. 66, 2010 [12] Bruce D. Homera, Elizabeth O. Haywardb, Jonathan Fryeb, Jan L. Plass, Gender and player characteristics in video game play of preadolescents, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 28, Iss. 5, Sep 2012, pp [13] [14] [15] /Facts_for_Families_Pages/Children_and_Video_Games_Playing_with_ Violence_91.aspx [16] E. Wartella, V. Rideout, A. R. Lauricella, S. L. Connell, Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology A national Survey, 2013 [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] A.P. Felt, E. Ha, S. Egelman, A. Haney, E. Chin and D. Wagner, Android permissions: User attention, comprehension, and behavior, Proceeding of the Eight Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, 2012.