Related papers: Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem
Virtual Reality (VR) has gained increasing traction among various domains in recent years, with major companies such as Meta, Pico, and Microsoft launching their application stores to support third-party developers in releasing their…
Online services like Google provide a variety of application programming interfaces (APIs). These online APIs enable authenticated third-party services and applications (apps) to access a user's account data for tasks such as single sign-on…
Current legal frameworks enforce that Android developers accurately report the data their apps collect. However, large codebases can make this reporting challenging. This paper employs an empirical approach to understand developers'…
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…
Parental control apps, which are mobile apps that allow parents to monitor and restrict their children's activities online, are becoming increasingly adopted by parents as a means of safeguarding their children's online safety. However, it…
Several studies have been conducted on understanding third-party user tracking on the web. However, web trackers can only track users on sites where they are embedded by the publisher, thus obtaining a fragmented view of a user's online…
Over the years, use of smartphones has come to dominate several areas, improving our lives, offering us convenience, and reshaping our daily work circumstances. Beyond traditional use for communication, they are used for many peripheral…
Online social networks support a vibrant ecosystem of third-party apps that get access to personal information of a large number of users. Despite several recent high-profile incidents, methods to systematically detect data misuse by…
Targeted advertising is fueled by the comprehensive tracking of users' online activity. As a result, advertising companies, such as Google and Meta, encourage website administrators to not only install tracking scripts on their websites but…
The widespread adoption of continuously connected smartphones and tablets developed the usage of mobile applications, among which many use location to provide geolocated services. These services provide new prospects for users: getting…
Third party apps that work on top of personal cloud services such as Google Drive and Dropbox, require access to the user's data in order to provide some functionality. Through detailed analysis of a hundred popular Google Drive apps from…
Dating apps for mobile devices, one popular GeoSocial app category, are growing increasingly popular. These apps encourage the sharing of more personal information than conventional social media apps, including continuous location data.…
Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, there has been increased interest in the use of digital contact tracing as a means of stopping chains of viral transmission, provoking alarm from privacy advocates. Concerning the…
Mobile applications (apps) have become deeply personal, constantly demanding access to privacy-sensitive information in exchange for more personalized user experiences. Such privacy-invading practices have generated major multidimensional…
We conducted a user study with 19 parent-teen dyads to understand the perceived benefits and drawbacks of using a mobile app that allows them to co-manage mobile privacy, safety, and security within their families. While the primary goal of…
Therapy and life-coaching apps have been rapidly growing in number, flavors, and popularity. However, their users routinely share highly sensitive and personal information, such as traumas, fantasies, desires, relationship difficulties, and…
Contact tracing in the COVID-19 pandemic is key to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. Countries and regions around the world have developed and deployed or are considering adopting contact-tracing software or mobile apps. While contact…
Fraudulent behaviors in Google Android app market fuel search rank abuse and malware proliferation. We present FairPlay, a novel system that uncovers both malware and search rank fraud apps, by picking out trails that fraudsters leave…
Teens are using mobile devices for an increasing number of activities. Smartphones and a variety of mobile apps for communication, entertainment, and productivity have become an integral part of their lives. This mobile phone use has…
Web cookies are ubiquitously used to track and profile the behavior of users. Although there is a solid empirical foundation for understanding the use of cookies in the global world wide web, thus far, limited attention has been devoted for…