Data Collection and Privacy Policy

This document is the privacy policy for MobileInsight (hereafter simply referred to as the “app” or “we”) Android application. By design, the primary concern of MobileInsight, is to gain insights of the mobile network from user (hereafter referred to “you” or “your”) devices. In this process, we may record mobile network activities from your phone. In doing this, we also respect your privacy concerns from using the app itself. Here we specify what kind of data MobileInsight is collecting while in operation, how this data is treated, and other privacy and security notice.

Privacy Summary

MobileInsight does not collect any data, including personally identifiable information, when you only open the app. When a specific app plugin is running on MobileInsight, some unique identifiable information, such as GPS locations, IMSI or other mobile network metadata may be recorded as integral parts together with other mobile network logs necessary to provide network analysis on your device. These logs are stored in your device locally and such identifiable information will be ignored and/or discarded in the analysis.

Local mobile network logs collected by MobileInsight will not be uploaded to our servers nor shared with third-party applications, unless with your explicit consent. Should user consent to enable the log sharing, the mobile network logs collected by MobileInsight are anonymized and transmitted in an encoded form via secure transport layer protocol. You are free to change your mind at any time to stop sharing the logs with us, but the logs you have already uploaded will not be removed from our servers because the logs have been anonymized and we are not able to trace back to any of your prior records.

What Data is Collected?

We may collect the following data while MobileInsight is operating:

  • Network properties, including:

    • IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity)

    • Current network connection type (e.g., LTE or HSPA)

    • Current cellular carrier (e.g., Verizon or China Mobile)

    • Current cell tower ID and its signal strength

    • Other non-personal identifiable network data (e.g., RRC messages), depending on your setting

  • Phone software and hardware information

    • MobileInsight application version

    • Android OS version

    • Phone model

    • Salted hash of device ID (e.g., IMEI or International Mobile Equipment Identity)

  • Location information (collected by some plugins)

    • GPS locations

    • Coarse-grained Cell ID location information (Location Area Code etc.)

We DO NOT collect any personally identifiable information in addition to that listed above: no names, no private data from other apps, and so on. MobileInsight does not use cookies, but the websites linked through the text, within the app, may do so.

Why is This Data Collected?

We collect this data mainly for the analytical purpose provided by MobileInsight. Some unique identifiable information, such as GPS locations, IMSI or other mobile network metadata may be recorded as integral parts together with other mobile network information necessary to provide our analytics. We use this data to:

  • Analyze mobile networks worldwide to understand how mobile network performance differs;

  • Provide mobile network diagnosis for potential problems;

  • Provide statistics of control-plane events of mobile networks;

  • Provide and improve the MobileInsight application (UI, UX and compatibility etc.);

  • Share information with academia personnel for research (with IRB approval) and education purpose.

How This Data is Treated and Stored?

MobileInsight collects this data and stores it locally in your phone and it is only accessible by you. The personal identifiable information is ignored and discarded in the analysis provided by MobileInsight.

Unless we obtain your consent, MobileInsight DOES NOT transmit this data to our servers. If we obtain your consent, this data will be anonymized and transmitted in an encoded form via secure transport layer protocol to our servers. Transmission of this data to our servers is not mandatory, but is some cases required to use the full functionality of MobileInsight.

If you consent to upload this data to our servers, we will retain this data for as long as you use the application and for a reasonable time thereafter. We will retain this data for up to 24 months and thereafter may store it in aggregation (in archives). We may not be able to delete the data you uploaded, because the data is anonymized when it is uploaded to our servers and we are unable to trace it back.

We reserve the right to publish results that we obtain through the analysis of the data collected by these tests both online and in academic publications. The data will be processed in aggregated fashion and no personal identifiable information will be used. We also reserve the right to release the dataset into the public domain. The data released to the public domain will not contain identifiable information. Any such information is removed before the release.

Security and Warranty

We are concerned about safeguarding the confidentiality of your data. We provide electronic safeguards to protect data we process and maintain. For example, we limit access to this data to authorized persons who need to know that data in order to operate, develop or improve our application. Please be aware that, although we seek to provide reasonable security for the data we process and maintain, no security system can prevent all potential security breaches.

Root and SuperUser Access

Because MobileInsight collects data directly from the radio diagnostics interface, it requires root permission, or SuperUser (SU) access. This is required for the app to function as Android APIs do not provide enough of network details for the analysis to be performed. Gaining such permission or access is usually called “rooting the phone” and shall be conducted by the user before installing MobileInsight. MobileInsight shall not be held accountable or assumed any responsibility of the possible consequences related to or caused by the “rooting” process, such as but not limited to, software and/or hardware damages, and the voidness of the phone warranty.

Third-Party Plugin Liability

As MobileInsight is an extendible app that can run third-party plugins on it, the user takes full responsibility when downloading and running a third-party plugin in MobileInsight. A third-party plugin is a plugin which is not distributed together with the MobileInsight app. Downloading and running a third-party plugin means that user is fully aware of the risks of doing so and agrees to the plugin developer’s term of use and privacy notice. We shall not be held responsible for any information leak, data loss, device damage, or warranty voidness caused by running third-party plugins on MobileInsight.

What are My Opt-Out Rights?

You can easily stop all collection of data by either deleting the application, or disabling the app from the Android OS settings. You can also change the settings inside the MobileInsight app any time to not upload any data or revise the plugin settings. You can also uninstall any plugin by deleting all the plugin codes in the MobileInsight folder.

Children

We do not use the application to knowingly solicit data from or market to children under the age of 14. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with data without their consent, he or she should contact us at the email provided below and we will take actions upon requests within a reasonable time.

Changes

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time for any reason. We will notify you of any changes to our Privacy Policy by posting the new Privacy Policy here and informing you via the application built-in announcement feature. You are advised to consult this Privacy Policy regularly for any changes, as continued use is deemed approval of all changes.

Contact

If you have questions or concerns regarding this policy, please contact us via email at support@mobileinsight.net.