We are happy to announce that a very interesting study entitled “An Investigation of Privacy and Security in VR APPs through URL String Analysis” has recently been accepted for publication in the Journal of Information Processing. Congraturations, Shu-pei and the team!

Shu-pei Huang, Takuya Watanabe, Mitsuaki Akiyama, Tatsuya Mori, “An Investigation of Privacy and Security in VR APPs through URL String Analysis,” Journal of Information Processing, vol. xx, no. xx., pp. xxxx-xxxxx (in press).

Overview.

In this research, we set out to investigate the privacy concerns inherent in the URLs used by virtual reality (VR) applications. In particular, we looked at static, hard-coded URLs that lead to destinations such as advertising and analytics services. These can have a big impact on user privacy. Using the Oculus Go VR device, the team applied a categorization methodology that helped identify the most common sources of advertising and analytics embedded in these VR applications. This approach revealed some potential privacy threats and showed us how they could impact user rights. It’s so important to look closely at external libraries and resources that VR app developers often use. The URLs we found that lead to privacy-sensitive services show us how much work there is to do to make VR safer for everyone.