Identification and analysis of free games' permissions in Google Play

Smart phones are becoming more prevalent than ever, and so does the use of game applications for mobile phones. Android platform offers an attractive environment for game developers, as it is open source and it is supported by many of the available smart phones. This paper surveys, analyses, and identifies the most requested permissions when installing a new game application on Android. We base on this analysis to draw some conclusions and recommendations about how to recognize suspicious games or malware. The study focuses on Android free game applications and covers 530 games from Google Play. The study shows that “full Internet access” is the most requested permission and that 60% of the requested permissions are of high risk. These results clearly call for more vigilance when installing new games/applications and mandate new solutions to secure Android applications and help end-users choose their games/applications safely.