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For library developers, understanding how their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are used in the field can be invaluable. Knowing how clients are using their APIs allows for data-driven decisions on prioritising bug reports,…
Although mobile ad frauds have been widespread, state-of-the-art approaches in the literature have mainly focused on detecting the so-called static placement frauds, where only a single UI state is involved and can be identified based on…
"App stores" are online software stores where end users may browse, purchase, download, and install software applications. By far, the best known app stores are associated with mobile platforms, such as Google Play for Android and Apple's…
Unlike the Web where each web page has a global URL to reach, a specific "content page" inside a mobile app cannot be opened unless the user explores the app with several operations from the landing page. Recently, deep links have been…
Software libraries implement APIs that deliver reusable functionalities. To correctly use these functionalities, software applications must satisfy certain correctness policies, for instance policies about the order some API methods can be…
Open-source software (OSS) is a pillar of modern software development. Its success depends on the dedication of maintainers who work constantly to keep their libraries stable, adapt to changing needs, and support a growing community. Yet,…
The Google Play marketplace has introduced the Data Safety section to improve transparency regarding how mobile applications (apps) collect, share, and protect user data. This mechanism requires developers to disclose privacy and…
Web communication has become an indispensable characteristic of mobile apps. However, it is not clear what data the apps transmit, to whom, and what consequences such transmissions have. We analyzed the web communications found in mobile…
Advertisement drives the economy of the mobile app ecosystem. As a key component in the mobile ad business model, mobile ad content has been overlooked by the research community, which poses a number of threats, e.g., propagating malware…
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…
Third-party libraries (TPLs) have been widely used in mobile apps, which play an essential part in the entire Android ecosystem. However, TPL is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can ease the development of mobile apps. On the other…
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 proper use of Android app permissions is crucial to the success and security of these apps. Users must agree to permission requests when installing or running their apps. Despite official Android platform documentation on proper…
Large software organizations such as Facebook or Netflix, who otherwise make daily or even hourly releases of their web applications using continuous delivery, have had to invest heavily into a customized release strategy for their mobile…
Smartphones contain a trove of sensitive personal data including our location, who we talk to, our habits, and our interests. Smartphone users trade access to this data by permitting apps to use it, and in return obtain functionality…
We have carefully instrumented a large portion of the population living in a university graduate dormitory by giving participants Android smart phones running our sensing software. In this paper, we propose the novel problem of predicting…
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…
Context: In-app advertising is the primary source of revenue for many mobile apps. The cost of advertising (ad cost) is non-negligible for app developers to ensure a good user experience and continuous profits. Previous studies mainly focus…
Ads Content Safety at Google requires classifying billions of ads for Google Ads content policies. Consistent and accurate policy enforcement is important for advertiser experience and user safety and it is a challenging problem, so there…
Privacy concerns have long been expressed around smart devices, and the concerns around Android apps have been studied by many past works. Over the past 10 years, we have crawled and scraped data for almost 1.9 million apps, and also stored…