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The rise of mobile apps has brought greater convenience and many options for users. However, many apps use analytics services to collect a wide range of user interaction data, with privacy policies often failing to reveal the types of…
The packaging model of Android apps requires the entire code necessary for the execution of an app to be shipped into one single apk file. Thus, an analysis of Android apps often visits code which is not part of the functionality delivered…
Android is the most popular operating system with billions of active devices. Unfortunately, its popularity and openness makes it attractive for unwanted apps, i.e., malware and potentially unwanted programs (PUP). In Android, app…
In December of 2020, Apple started to require app developers to self-report privacy label annotations on their apps indicating what data is collected and how it is used.To understand the adoption and shifts in privacy labels in the App…
"Incentivized" advertising platforms allow mobile app developers to acquire new users by directly paying users to install and engage with mobile apps (e.g., create an account, make in-app purchases). Incentivized installs are banned by the…
We study the temporal dynamics of potentially harmful apps (PHAs) on Android by leveraging 8.8M daily on-device detections collected among 11.7M customers of a popular mobile security product between 2019 and 2020. We show that the current…
Market and user characteristics of mobile apps make their release management different from proprietary software products and web services. Despite the wealth of information regarding users' feedback on an app, an in-depth analysis of app…
App stores include an increasing amount of user feedback in form of app ratings and reviews. Research and recently also tool vendors have proposed analytics and data mining solutions to leverage this feedback to developers and analysts,…
In the Google Play store, an introduction page is associated with every mobile application (app) for users to acquire its details, including screenshots, description, reviews, etc. However, it remains a challenge to identify what items…
In-app advertising closely relates to app revenue. Reckless ad integration could adversely impact app reliability and user experience, leading to loss of income. It is very challenging to balance the ad revenue and user experience for app…
As mobile app usage continues to rise, so does the generation of extensive user interaction data, which includes actions such as swiping, zooming, or the time spent on a screen. Apps often collect a large amount of this data and claim to…
Third-party security apps are an integral part of the Android app ecosystem. Many users install them as an extra layer of protection for their devices. There are hundreds of such security apps, both free and paid in Google Play Store and…
The competing nature of the app market motivates us to shift our focus on apps that provide similar functionalities and directly compete with each other (i.e., peer apps). In this work, we study the ratings and the review text of 100…
In my dissertation, I will analyze how the product market position of a mobile app affects its pricing strategies, which in turn impacts an app's monetization process. Using natural language processing and k-mean clustering on apps' text…
While there have been various studies towards Android apps and their development, there is limited discussion of the broader class of apps that fall in the fake area. Fake apps and their development are distinct from official apps and…
User reviews published in mobile app repositories are essential for understanding user satisfaction and engagement within a specific market segment. Manual analysis of reviews is impractical due to the large data volume, and automated…
Background Despite the benefits offered by an abundance of health applications promoted on app marketplaces (e.g., Google Play Store), the wide adoption of mobile health and e-health apps is yet to come. Objective This study aims to…
Repackaging is a serious threat to the Android ecosystem as it deprives app developers of their benefits, contributes to spreading malware on users' devices, and increases the workload of market maintainers. In the space of six years, the…
The complex nature of intelligent systems motivates work on supporting users during interaction, for example through explanations. However, as of yet, there is little empirical evidence in regard to specific problems users face when…
Online app search optimization (ASO) platforms that provide bulk installs and fake reviews for paying app developers in order to fraudulently boost their search rank in app stores, were shown to employ diverse and complex strategies that…