Abstract

Android mobile games often embed third-party analytics and advertising SDKs, raising concerns about how frequently these apps request access to privacy-sensitive and other critical resources. This study examines permissions in top free Android games to assess end-user privacy risk and the prevalence of advertising/tracking access. Using the Mobile Security Framework (MobSF), the authors extracted permissions from 92 games and identified 250 unique permissions. They report how requests are distributed across Android protection levels, flag privacy-relevant and potentially gameplay-unrelated dangerous permissions, and quantify permissions commonly associated with ads and tracking. The results provide an empirical baseline for permission-driven privacy exposure and motivate stronger transparency and permission minimization by developers and marketplaces.