Security Analysis of User Privacy in Vacation Rental Applications

Abstract

The Information age has ushered in a new era of advancement and facilitation for human civilization. For entertainment and leisure, Vacation rental applications are a go-to for reserving rooms in hotels in distant areas. These applications have brought extraordinary convenience to users who can bypass agents and their commissions. However, this convenience comes at a cost. The data exchanged and stored by these applications can be exploited to act as a threat to Personal Identifiable Information (PII). These applications store not only PII but also transaction details as well as other sensitive information like hotels that were reserved on a particular date. This data can be used by Hackers for malicious purposes. On the other hand, it can be utilized by Forensics experts to dig down and obtain useful results. This research is focused on performing a security analysis of user privacy in vacation rental applications and gaining a better insight to improve the security posture of such applications.