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In today’s digital world, privacy is one of the most important factors that needs to be considered. Companies browse several websites for their research and development, but at the same time, don’t want to reveal their identity. There are several reasons for that - competitors’ privacy, masking finance-related information, encrypting end-to-end messaging, and so on. Most of the data that is tracked by the host websites can be used against the browsing party, not necessarily for any criminal activity, but it can be as simple as just spamming ads.
Once a customer keeps their identity private, they have the complete freedom to browse through the entire internet without any fear. There are several privacy-focused applications that provide such features. For such security-driven applications, quality is a key factor. A single miss in the quality or its functionality can jeopardize the overall objective of the application by putting the security at risk. Hence, in this article, we will explore how test automation strategies can be implemented for effective testing of privacy-focused applications with a real-life example.
Privacy-focused applications are one of the most useful tools for protecting user privacy while browsing online. There are several kinds of privacy that these tools offer - encrypted communication, anti-tracking mechanisms, anonymous browsing, and identity-protection features. How these applications provide privacy is through various means, like hiding IP address, browser details, or device identification. If these details are masked, the tracking party will have no information about the user whatsoever.
Maintaining privacy is of utmost importance for several reasons:
If you are building a privacy-focused application, all of these scenarios must be considered and tested well before launching.
Testing privacy applications requires a different approach than the usual ones. These are:
If you are launching your privacy application, it must have been tested across all possible environments. Testing them in real-life environments is not possible, for it may reveal the vulnerabilities of the application and disrupt the real-world operations. Creating isolated test environments is the solution here. To create such test environments, tools like Docker and Kubernetes can be used. They simulate the real-world environment while packaging all the dependencies of the application in a closed container. This allows for isolated testing on any kind of environment, along with having no effect outside the closed container.
testRigor, as a codeless automation testing tool, can be used for simulating such a test environment. All you need to do is write commands in natural language, and it will generate the test cases and execute them.
E.g., below is the list of commands for the login method on Dicloak in a simulated environment in testRigor.
Once you hit run, it will execute these steps and will generate screenshots for each step. The last step checks if the login was successful, and the dashboard is displayed.
A test automation tool must be used to simulate the sessions that can test the application for its session and identity privacy features. Through such testing, testers can ensure that the application is able to hide user fingerprints, session data, and environment variables effectively while browsing any website online. That kind of browsing can be simulated on a testing tool. There shouldn’t be any conflict between different accounts when the multi-account functionality of the application is tested. Once this security testing is done, you can be sure that the anti-detection feature or session isolation is functioning properly.
Securing sensitive data is one of the most important features for a privacy application. During testing, synthetic test data must be generated on which the application must be run. While this data is used for running the application, the testing tool must validate that there is no leakage of the data and that it is completely secured. This includes a comprehensive functionality testing of the most important aspect of the application. One of the most useful techniques for anti-tracking security is to create a proxy for your web application. Let’s see how it is done using testRigor for the Dicloak privacy application.
The following steps show the proxy creation commands on testRigor for the Dicloak application.
The above commands will log in to the Dicloak application and open the create proxy section, where the above details would be filled as follows:
Once these steps are executed, the proxy is created and verified by the test automation platform through the following screenshot.
The future of test automation for privacy-focused applications is extremely intelligent. AI-powered test automation tools will detect any data leakage in the simulated environment and notify the users. They can provide better test coverage, auto-generate test scripts, and even self-repair them to adapt to the growing needs of the software. Privacy regulations can be verified through compliance rules embedded in the testing platforms while running functional tests.
Once the application has been released, the testing doesn’t stop there. Continuous monitoring is essential to catch any anomalies and detect any unusual behavior. QA teams must be notified immediately to deploy a hotfix for such cases. Dynamic environments must be simulated for all the possible scenarios of testing such applications to ensure robust performance. Privacy is a non-negotiable requirement, and to leave it under manual testing could be disastrous, for it is prone to human error. Test automation is the complete solution for testing such mission-critical applications.
