Open to Faculty, Phd students, and Staff. 

The USC Marshall Initiative on Digital Competition will host a talk on Ginger Zhe Jin's paper The GDPR and SDK Usage In Android Mobile Apps.

Date: September 23, 2024

Time: 2:00p - 3:00p

Location:  Fertitta Hall - JFF 316 

This paper is the type that cuts across fields.  Please mark your calendars and let any PhD students also know about the talk.  We reserved a room on campus for the talk but be prepared for location change. 

Abstract

Using a unique dataset on Software Development Kits (SDKs), we study SDK usage in Android mobile apps before and after the European Union implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018.

In the raw data, Android apps in both the US and five major European countries (EU5) increased SDK usage after the GDPR, despite the GDPR's heuristic concerning data minimization. However, relative to US-only apps, we find that EU5-only apps reduce the number of non-Google SDKs by 1.3% after GDPR's rollout.

This small and marginally significant result is driven by non-top-ranked apps and by both SDKs involving sensitive data and SDKs involving non-sensitive data. In contrast, apps that multihome in the US and EU5 reduce SDK usage by 6.3% after the GDPR relative to US-only apps. This larger and highly significant result likely occurs due to restrictions on cross-border data transfers and because SDK usage is less correlated with app performance for multihoming apps.

The GDPR and SDK Usage In Android Mobile Apps by

Ginger Zhe Jin, University of Maryland - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Ziqiao Liu, University of Maryland, College Park

Liad Wagman, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) - Lally School of Management & Technology