Related papers: A Longitudinal Study of Google Play
In-app advertisements have become a major revenue source for app developers in the mobile app ecosystem. Ad libraries play an integral part in this ecosystem as app developers integrate these libraries into their apps to display ads. In…
While smart mobile health apps that adapt to users' progressive individual needs are proliferating, many of them struggle to fulfill their promises due to an inferior user experience. Understanding the concerns of real-world users related…
Intense competition in the mobile apps market means it is important to maintain high levels of app reliability to avoid losing users. Yet despite its importance, app reliability is underexplored in the research literature. To address this…
To help curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and public health authorities around the world have launched a number of contact-tracing apps. Although contact tracing apps have received extensive attentions from the research…
Android-based smart devices are exponentially growing, and due to the ubiquity of the Internet, these devices are globally connected to the different devices/networks. Its popularity, attractive features, and mobility make malware creator…
Android applications collecting data from users must protect it according to the current legal frameworks. Such data protection has become even more important since the European Union rolled out the General Data Protection Regulation…
On mobile phones, users and developers use apps official marketplaces serving as repositories of apps. The Google Play Store and Apple Store are the official marketplaces of Android and Apple products which offer more than a million apps.…
The increasing attraction of mobile apps has inspired researchers to analyze apps from different perspectives. As with any software product, apps have different attributes such as size, content maturity, rating, category, or number of…
Fairness is one of the socio-technical concerns that must be addressed in software systems. Considering the popularity of mobile software applications (apps) among a wide range of individuals worldwide, mobile apps with unfair behaviors and…
Ample research has demonstrated that compliance with data protection principles remains limited on the web and mobile. For example, almost none of the apps on the Google Play Store fulfil the minimum requirements regarding consent under EU…
We study four promotions offered on Apple's mobile app store that vary in user exposure, price discount and redemption procedure. We find that promotions that are full-price discounted and digital (i.e., the redemption procedure is a few…
Increasing interest in securing the Android ecosystem has spawned numerous efforts to assist app developers in building secure apps. These efforts have resulted in tools and techniques capable of detecting vulnerabilities (and malicious…
Software testing is an important phase in the software development life-cycle because it helps in identifying bugs in a software system before it is shipped into the hand of its end users. There are numerous studies on how developers test…
Android apps are built on APIs that abstract core Android system functionalities. These APIs are officially documented in multiple files distributed with the Android source code or SDK, which we collectively refer to as Android API Lists…
Mobile applications have become an inseparable part of people's daily life. Nonetheless, the market competition is extremely fierce, and apps lacking recognition among most users are susceptible to market elimination. To this end,…
In recent years, mobile applications have become indispensable tools for managing various aspects of life. From enhancing productivity to providing personalized entertainment, mobile apps have revolutionized people's daily routines. Despite…
App developers aim to create apps that cater to the needs of different types of users. This development approach, also known as the "one-size-fits-all" strategy, involves combining various functionalities into one app. However, this…
The transparency and privacy behavior of mobile browsers has remained widely unexplored by the research community. In fact, as opposed to regular Android apps, mobile browsers may present contradicting privacy behaviors. On the one end,…
In the age of ubiquitous technologies, security- and privacy-focused choices have turned out to be a significant concern for individuals and organizations. Risks of such pervasive technologies are extensive and often misaligned with user…
$\textbf{Context}$: The release planning of mobile apps has become an area of active research, with most studies centering on app analysis through release notes in the Apple App Store and tracking user reviews via issue trackers. However,…