Exploring the Eastern Frontier: A First Look at Mobile App Tracking in China

Abstract

Many mobile apps are integrated with mobile advertising and tracking services running in the background to collect information for tracking users. Considering China currently tops mobile traffic growth globally, this paper aims to take a first look at China’s mobile tracking patterns from a large 4G network. We observe the dominance of the top popular domestic trackers and the pervasive tracking on mobile apps. We also discover a very well-connected tracking community, where the non-popular trackers form many local communities with each community tracking a particular category of mobile apps. We further conclude that some trackers have a monopoly on specific groups of mobile users and 10% of users upload Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to trackers (with 90% of PII tracking flows local to China). Our results consistently show a distinctive mobile tracking market in China. We hope the results can inform users and stakeholders on the interplay between mobile tracking and potential security and privacy issues.