End of September, our colleague Mehrdad Bahrini gave a talk about "Transparency and Consent Challenges in mHealth Apps: An Interdisciplinary Study of Privacy Policies, Data Sharing, and Dark Patterns." (Mehrdad Bahrini, Alexander Herbst, Merle Freye, Matthias Kohn, Karsten-Sohr and Rainer Malaka) at Esorics in Toulouse.

Together with his colleagues from the Digital Media Lab at University of Bremen, he analyzed 20 popular mHealth apps to understand how they handle sensitive health data. By combining static/dynamic analysis with privacy policy reviews, they uncovered a clear mismatch between what apps declare and what they actually do. E.g. apps transmitted personal data before users had given consent; data was routinely sent to third countries such as the USA; consent dialogs contained dark patterns, nudging users toward "accept all".

An important topic in today's world. Well done, Mehrdad!