The article “Snooping on Mobile Phones: Prevalence and Trends” with authorship of LaSIGE’s researchers, Diogo Marques, Tiago Guerreiro and Luis Carriço, in collaboration with researchers from the University of British Columbia, Canada, received the “Distinguished Paper Award ” at SOUPS conference (Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security), which is currently taking place (June 22-24) in Denver, Colorado, USA.
This research work estimates that 1 in 5 people have accessed to contents on the mobile phone of a friend or family member without their permission. To that end, given the reluctance of people to admit reprehensible behavior, the researchers applied an anonymously and indirect inquiry methodology, which led to these alarming figures that outperform in large scale the estimates obtained previously in direct questionnaires. The study also presents trends for this phenomenon, which appears prevalent among the younger population and those with higher levels of smartphones user experience.
The article is available at: https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2016/technical-sessions/presentation/marques
The work has received media attention from the international press, taking as examples: