Mobile applications (apps) facilitate the management of
devices and sensors from mobile devices in IoE environments. However,
their use carries risks for the privacy of their users: many of them manage
personal data. The App-PI (App Privacy Impact) ecosystem analyzes the
impact of apps on privacy, addressing the challenge of knowing, under-
standing and mitigating these risks.
In App-PI, a metadata warehouse, a set of analysis tools that calcu-
late indicators, a visualization platform, and verification processes, col-
laborate. Data flows between these components to provide persons using
the visualization platform with accurate, reliable, and understandable
information. The warehouse hosts metadata related to the privacy and
security of mobile apps. The data flow starts with the collection and
integration of data hosted in the warehouse. The analysis tools use these
data to calculate indicators that provide objective measures of the risk
associated with each app. These values are the input for a verification
process based on static analysis, which provides confidence. To make it
easier for end users to understand these indicators, they are displayed
on the visualization platform with easy-to-understand charts. The flows
and usefulness of this ecosystem are shown for health and wellness apps,
characteristic of IoE environments.
