Abstract

Personal data of consumers has become a highly valuable resource in e-business. Tech-nologies like smartphones, social networks or search engines help to access, collect and monitor an almost infinite amount of data about consumers. In this environment the traditional notice and consent principle seems insufficient for effective privacy protec-tion. Awareness and control are constituting parts of an effective privacy management. This paper investigates how privacy awareness is supported in mobile business. Due to the critical privacy situation in this field, several third-party privacy enhancing mobile apps emerged beside the OS functionalities. The paper explores what information objects these awareness enhancing apps provide. Based on a detailed analysis of 19 apps, a set of 11 information objects is identified that contributes to 4 dimensions of privacy aware-ness. The findings show that the OS mainly focus on transparency regarding permission systems, that users can obtain more information about the use of their data by using specialized apps and that some dimensions of privacy awareness are almost not sup-ported and open for research as well as the development of new solutions.

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