BACKGROUND

The present disclosure relates to the preservation of privacy in mobile applications, and more particularly, to the preservation of privacy in monitored applications.

Customers demand mobile applications that are responsive, easy to use and intuitive. While significant effort goes into designing and testing the user interfaces of mobile applications, in many cases problems and usability issues do not become apparent until the application has been deployed. These issues can occur despite best efforts used during the implementation and testing phases of application development. Collecting actual behavior of the application following its deployment is important to the application's overall success with customers.

Currently, customer analytics platforms exist for providing digital customer experience management and customer behavior analysis solutions. One example is TEALEAF, which is a customer experience management solution to help companies meet online conversion and customer retention objectives. One goal of these systems is to determine how users or customers are interacting with a given product.

BRIEF SUMMARY

According to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a method of operating a mobile device includes displaying a user interface as an image, the user interface being composed of a plurality of widgets, storing a privacy policy identifying at least one of the widgets, capturing a screenshot image corresponding to the screenshot image, excluding at least one of the widgets from the screenshot image to create a modified screenshot image, and transmitting the modified screenshot image over a network to a monitoring server.

According to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, a computer network includes a mobile device running an application capturing and modifying a screenshot image using a privacy policy to generate a modified screenshot image, a computer network, and a monitoring server in signal communication with the mobile device over the computer network, wherein the monitoring server provides the privacy policy to the mobile device and receives the modified screenshot image from the mobile device, and wherein the privacy policy identifies a plurality of widgets of a user interface to be excluded from the screenshot image.

As used herein, “facilitating” an action includes performing the action, making the action easier, helping to carry the action out, or causing the action to be performed. Thus, by way of example and not limitation, instructions executing on one processor might facilitate an action carried out by instructions executing on a remote processor, by sending appropriate data or commands to cause or aid the action to be performed. For the avoidance of doubt, where an actor facilitates an action by other than performing the action, the action is nevertheless performed by some entity or combination of entities.

One or more embodiments of the invention or elements thereof can be implemented in the form of a computer program product including a computer readable storage medium with computer usable program code for performing the method steps indicated. Furthermore, one or more embodiments of the invention or elements thereof can be implemented in the form of a system (or apparatus) including a memory, and at least one processor that is coupled to the memory and operative to perform exemplary method steps. Yet further, in another aspect, one or more embodiments of the invention or elements thereof can be implemented in the form of means for carrying out one or more of the method steps described herein; the means can include (i) hardware module(s), (ii) software module(s) stored in a computer readable storage medium (or multiple such media) and implemented on a hardware processor, or (iii) a combination of (i) and (ii); any of (i)-(iii) implement the specific techniques set forth herein.

Techniques of the present invention can provide substantial beneficial technical effects. For example, one or more embodiments may provide one or more of the following advantages:address the issue of user privacy and sensitive information in monitored applications, andenable customizable privacy policies that can be created/updated without requiring the application to be altered.

These and other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments thereof, which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings.

