Malicious Interfaces: strategies for personal data collection in apps

Abstract

This paper analyzes malicious interfaces (MIs) (dark patterns) in ten apps used by the municipality of Salvador to collect personal data. By mediating different aspects of urban social life, these apps contribute to the construction of the contemporary city and the way it is experienced. This new informational dimension of the city, in turn, poses challenges for citizens’ privacy as it fosters the production and collection of as much sensitive personal data as possible. We evaluated the app interfaces with a severity scale (SS) in order to identify the different types of MIs and the level of threat they pose to users’ privacy. All the analyzed apps have MIs, most of which are level 1 (minor), and there is a tendency for these to become increasingly commonplace. The MIs in the apps are part of the increasing platformization and datafication of society and the performative agency of algorithms (PDPA).