Characterizing Location-based Mobile Tracking in Mobile Ad Networks

Mobile apps nowadays are often packaged with third-party ad libraries to monetize user data

User Privacy Leakage in Location-based Mobile Ad Services

The online advertising ecosystem leverages its massive data collection capability to learn the properties of users for targeted ad deliveries. Many Android app developers include ad libraries in their apps as a way of monetization. These ad libraries contain advertisements from the sell-side platforms, which collect an extensive set of sensitive information to provide more relevant advertisements for their customers. Existing efforts have investigated the increasingly pervasive private data collection of mobile ad networks over time. However, there lacks a measurement study to evaluate the scale of privacy leakage of ad networks across different geographical areas. In this work, we present a measurement study of the potential privacy leakage in mobile advertising services conducted across different locations. We develop an automated measurement system to intercept mobile traffic at different locations and perform data analysis to pinpoint data collection behaviors of ad networks at both the app-level and organization-level. With 1,100 popular apps running across 10 different locations, we perform extensive threat assessments for different ad networks. Meanwhile, we explore the ad-blockers’ behavior in the ecosystem of ad networks, and whether those ad-blockers are actually capturing the users’ private data in the meantime of blocking the ads. We find that: the number of location-based ads tends to be positively related to the population density of locations, ad networks collect different types of data across different locations, and ad-blockers can block the private data leakage

Consumer perceptions of human digital twins as a marketing tool

A Digital Twin is a digital representation of a physical product or entity or a “set of virtual information constructs”. To effectively represent its physical counterpart, the digital representation needs to know about its properties, rules and behaviour. In order to enable this, there is a constant flow of data between physical objects and digital representations. The data contained in the digital representation allows simulations to be conducted and learnings from these simulations enable better decision making without affecting the physical realm. Human Digital Twins duplicate a person, rather than a physical product or artifact. As Human Digital Twins hold large amounts of data about a person and are able to utilise this data to predict a person’s possible behaviour and control a person’s choices Human Digital Twins hold economic value for organisations. Human Digital Twins can be effectively used in consumer choice modelling to determine a person’s preferences and assist organisations in marketing products and alternatives to customers. Location, purchasing behaviour and online activity can be used to predict potential future customer behaviour and choices. In previous studies proposing Human Digital Twins, limited emphasis has been placed on the opinion of the people who have been twinned. There are several ethical and moral implications in creating Human Digital Twins. The perceptions of the twinning process of people have not adequately been researched. Current technology allows Human Digital Twins to be created but challenges lie with the moral and ethical complications in a person’s Digital Twin acceptance. Various factors have been identified in previous research relating to Human Digital Twins. Knowledge, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Trust and Technological Proficiency are factors that have an influence on a person’s Human Digital Twin acceptance. These factors were considered as independent factors of the conceptual model while user acceptance was considered the dependent factor of the proposed model. The questionnaire for this study was completed by a sample of 121 respondents, who were reached through convenience and snowball sampling. The questionnaire was primarily distributed to students at the Nelson Mandela Business School in Gqeberha, South Africa. The demographic data indicates that a high number of respondents v reside in the Eastern Cape and the majority of respondents achieved a post graduate degree. This is not necessarily an accurate description of the South African population and the sample used in future studies should be more representative of the South African population. The results indicate that the independent factors Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Technological Proficiency had significant positive effects on Human Digital Twin acceptance. Two of the original independent factors were split into two sub-factors as a result of the EFA. The independent factor Trust became Human Digital Twin Distrust and Trust in Companies using Human Digital Twins. The independent factor Knowledge became Knowledge about Human Digital Twins and Knowledge about the role of technology. This study based its conceptual model on the Technology Acceptance Model. The model relies on two major determinants, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use, to determine a user’s intention to use and accept a technology. This study added new determinants of acceptance to the original TAM, two of which was found reliable. Knowledge of Human Digital Twins and Technological Proficiency were both found to have a significant positive influence on the acceptance of Human Digital Twins. This study was one of the first to suggest a relationship between Technological Proficiency and the acceptance of a new technology. The managerial recommendations set out to bridge the gap between this study and practice. It is not uncommon for researchers to suggest corrective actions and make strategic recommendations based on the results of a study. This study provided managerial recommendations to marketers who want to employ Human Digital Twins in their strategies. This will allow marketers to test campaigns and improve on existing campaigns much quicker than before and take new products to market with testing marketing strategies at a much quicker pace. Organisations need to be cognisant of the fact that legal issues such privacy, consent, discrimination and copyright will be very important when creating Human Digital Twins. Marketers will not only be able to use information gathered by Human Digital Twins in the real world but in virtual worlds as well.Thesis (MA) -- FFaculty of business and economic sciences, 202

Consumer perceptions of human digital twins as a marketing tool

A Digital Twin is a digital representation of a physical product or entity or a “set of virtual information constructs”. To effectively represent its physical counterpart, the digital representation needs to know about its properties, rules and behaviour. In order to enable this, there is a constant flow of data between physical objects and digital representations. The data contained in the digital representation allows simulations to be conducted and learnings from these simulations enable better decision making without affecting the physical realm. Human Digital Twins duplicate a person, rather than a physical product or artifact. As Human Digital Twins hold large amounts of data about a person and are able to utilise this data to predict a person’s possible behaviour and control a person’s choices Human Digital Twins hold economic value for organisations. Human Digital Twins can be effectively used in consumer choice modelling to determine a person’s preferences and assist organisations in marketing products and alternatives to customers. Location, purchasing behaviour and online activity can be used to predict potential future customer behaviour and choices. In previous studies proposing Human Digital Twins, limited emphasis has been placed on the opinion of the people who have been twinned. There are several ethical and moral implications in creating Human Digital Twins. The perceptions of the twinning process of people have not adequately been researched. Current technology allows Human Digital Twins to be created but challenges lie with the moral and ethical complications in a person’s Digital Twin acceptance. Various factors have been identified in previous research relating to Human Digital Twins. Knowledge, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Trust and Technological Proficiency are factors that have an influence on a person’s Human Digital Twin acceptance. These factors were considered as independent factors of the conceptual model while user acceptance was considered the dependent factor of the proposed model. The questionnaire for this study was completed by a sample of 121 respondents, who were reached through convenience and snowball sampling. The questionnaire was primarily distributed to students at the Nelson Mandela Business School in Gqeberha, South Africa. The demographic data indicates that a high number of respondents v reside in the Eastern Cape and the majority of respondents achieved a post graduate degree. This is not necessarily an accurate description of the South African population and the sample used in future studies should be more representative of the South African population. The results indicate that the independent factors Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Technological Proficiency had significant positive effects on Human Digital Twin acceptance. Two of the original independent factors were split into two sub-factors as a result of the EFA. The independent factor Trust became Human Digital Twin Distrust and Trust in Companies using Human Digital Twins. The independent factor Knowledge became Knowledge about Human Digital Twins and Knowledge about the role of technology. This study based its conceptual model on the Technology Acceptance Model. The model relies on two major determinants, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use, to determine a user’s intention to use and accept a technology. This study added new determinants of acceptance to the original TAM, two of which was found reliable. Knowledge of Human Digital Twins and Technological Proficiency were both found to have a significant positive influence on the acceptance of Human Digital Twins. This study was one of the first to suggest a relationship between Technological Proficiency and the acceptance of a new technology. The managerial recommendations set out to bridge the gap between this study and practice. It is not uncommon for researchers to suggest corrective actions and make strategic recommendations based on the results of a study. This study provided managerial recommendations to marketers who want to employ Human Digital Twins in their strategies. This will allow marketers to test campaigns and improve on existing campaigns much quicker than before and take new products to market with testing marketing strategies at a much quicker pace. Organisations need to be cognisant of the fact that legal issues such privacy, consent, discrimination and copyright will be very important when creating Human Digital Twins. Marketers will not only be able to use information gathered by Human Digital Twins in the real world but in virtual worlds as well.Thesis (MA) -- FFaculty of business and economic sciences, 202