Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
Smartphones are providing remarkable services to their users through various applications (apps) (Gokgoz et al., 2021; Ho and Chung, 2020; Shankar et al., 2022). Smartphone users download and install various apps for use in their daily lives. The smartphone application market has experienced an enormous growth since its outset (Adil et al., 2022; Ho and Chung, 2020), and in 2016, the global market size of this industry was $108,440mn and projected to reach $311,249mn by 2023 at a compound annual growth rate of 19.2% (Namde, 2017). These applications are used for many purposes, for example, for checking weather updates, making video calls, sending text and voice messages, reading e-newspapers, taking and editing pictures, securing mobile phones with app locker applications and much more (Chen and Hsieh, 2012; Jingjun et al., 2008; Persaud and Azhar, 2012).
Smartphone applications require various permissions from users to access their personal information, for example, location, identity, photos/media, device and call information, app history, camera, Wi-Fi connection information, microphone, contacts and so on (Chen and Hsieh, 2012; Cheung, 2014; Maseeh, 2022). For example, location information is necessary for weather applications to provide exact weather conditions at a specific geographical location (Degirmenci, 2020; Jengchung et al., 2008). However, privacy concerns arise when users may become suspicious about the usage and storage of such information by another party (Degirmenci, 2020; Gu et al., 2017; Harris et al., 2016; Maseeh et al., 2022; Varnali and Toker, 2010). When such notifications appear on the mobile screen, users might be reluctant to allow the app to access their location and/or personal information and may choose to not install the app (Boyles et al., 2016; Jengchung et al., 2008).
People are suspicious about sharing their personal information with smartphone applications. Identity theft is a major concern, and it is a hard decision for smartphone users to share their personal information due to major privacy issues which could become a security threat (Ashaduzzaman et al., 2022; Jengchung et al., 2008). For example, app developers can continuously track users’ location via some applications (e.g. weather app), where such information could be misused by service providers/app developers (Farnden et al., 2015) or could be communicated...