@inproceedings{a7383c50f2d14fbdb798214596420f03,
title = "Privacy implications of presence sharing in mobile messaging applications",
abstract = "Mobile messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, provide a free alternative for mobile texting on smartphones. Mobile messengers typically also share presence information about users to indicate when a user is online. We investigated the privacy implications of such presence updates, using WhatsApp as an example. We conducted a user study with two independent groups (19 participants in total), in which we collected and analyzed their presence information over four weeks of regular WhatsApp use and conducted follow-up interviews. Our results show that presence information alone is sufficient to accurately identify, for example, daily routines, deviations, times of inappropriate mobile messaging, or conversation partners. We discuss resulting privacy implications of presence information and potential solutions to mitigate these issues.",
keywords = "EWI-25520, METIS-309788, IR-93355, SCS-Cybersecurity",
author = "Andreas Buchenscheit and Bastian K{\"o}nings and Andreas Neubert and Florian Schaub and Matthias Schneider and Frank Kargl",
note = "eemcs-eprint-25520 ; 13th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, IEEE MUM 2014 ; Conference date: 25-11-2014 Through 28-11-2014",
year = "2014",
month = nov,
doi = "10.1145/2677972.2677980",
language = "Undefined",
isbn = "978-1-4503-3304-7",
publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
pages = "20--29",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (IEEE MUM 2014)",
address = "United States",
}