Related papers: Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem
Due to Android's open source feature and low barriers to entry for developers, millions of developers and third-party organizations have been attracted into the Android ecosystem. However, over 90 percent of mobile malware are found…
Context: More than 50 countries have developed COVID contact-tracing apps to limit the spread of coronavirus. However, many experts and scientists cast doubt on the effectiveness of those apps. For each app, a large number of reviews have…
Privacy regulations protect and promote the privacy of individuals by requiring mobile apps to provide a privacy policy that explains what personal information is collected and how these apps process this information. However, developers…
Physical retailers, who once led the way in tracking with loyalty cards and `reverse appends', now lag behind online competitors. Yet we might be seeing these tables turn, as many increasingly deploy technologies ranging from simple sensors…
Websites with hyper-partisan, left or right-leaning focus offer content that is typically biased towards the expectations of their target audience. Such content often polarizes users, who are repeatedly primed to specific (extreme) content,…
With the rapid growth of mobile apps, users' concerns about their privacy have become increasingly prominent. Android app logs serve as crucial computer resources, aiding developers in debugging and monitoring the status of Android apps,…
Smartphones, the devices we carry everywhere with us, are being heavily tracked and have undoubtedly become a major threat to our privacy. As "tracking the trackers" has become a necessity, various static and dynamic analysis tools have…
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…
As mobile applications (apps) become ubiquitous in everyday life, it is crucial for developers to prioritize accessibility for users with diverse abilities. While previous research has identified widespread accessibility issues and raised…
The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has taken the world by surprise, forcing lockdowns and straining public health care systems. COVID-19 is known to be a highly infectious virus, and infected individuals do not initially exhibit symptoms,…
The modern web is increasingly characterized by the pervasiveness of Surveillance Capitalism. This investigation employs an empirical approach to examine this phenomenon through the web tracking practices of major tech companies --…
Due to the convenience of access-on-demand to information and business solutions, mobile apps have become an important asset in the digital world. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, app developers have joined the response effort in…
Mobile gaming applications (apps) have become increasingly pervasive, including a growing number of games designed for children. Despite their popularity, these apps often integrate complex analytics, advertising, and attribution…
There are over 1.2 million applications on the Google Play store today with a large number of competing applications for any given use or function. This creates challenges for users in selecting the right application. Moreover, some of the…
Privacy, security, and accessibility, like ethical concerns in mobile applications (a.k.a. apps), commonly subsumed under non-functional requirements, are generally reported by users through app reviews available in app stores. However,…
There is a growing concern about consolidation trends in Internet services, with, for instance, a large fraction of popular websites depending on a handful of third-party service providers. In this paper, we report on a large-scale study of…
Online user privacy and tracking have been extensively studied in recent years, especially due to privacy and personal data-related legislations in the EU and the USA, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, ePrivacy Regulation, and…
Cognition has been found to constrain several aspects of human behaviour, such as the number of friends and the number of favourite places a person keeps stable over time. This limitation has been empirically defined in the physical and…
Prior studies on mobile app analysis often analyze apps across different categories or focus on a small set of apps within a category. These studies either provide general insights for an entire app store which consists of millions of apps,…
The rise of mobile apps has brought greater convenience and customization for users. However, many apps use analytics services to collect a wide range of user interaction data purportedly to improve their service, while presenting app users…