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Android is designed with a number of built-in security features such as app sandboxing and permission-based access controls. Android supports multiple communication methods for apps to cooperate. This creates a security risk of app…
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…
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is considered as the benchmark in the European Union (EU) for privacy and data protection standards. Since before its entry into force in 2018, substantial research has been conducted in the…
Mobile devices have access to personal, potentially sensitive data, and there is a large number of mobile applications and third-party libraries that transmit this information over the network to remote servers (including app developer…
Contact tracing apps are powerful software tools that can help control the spread of COVID-19. In this article, we evaluated 53 COVID-19 contact tracing apps found on the Google Play Store in terms of their usage, rating, access permission,…
As technology and technology companies have grown in power, ubiquity, and societal influence, some companies -- and notably some mobile apps -- have come to be perceived as privacy threats. Prior work has considered how various factors…
As privacy features in Android operating system improve, privacy-invasive apps may gradually shift their focus to non-standard and covert channels for leaking private user/device information. Such leaks also remain largely undetected by…
This paper reports a large-scale study that aims to understand how mobile application (app) vulnerabilities are associated with software libraries. We analyze both free and paid apps. Studying paid apps was quite meaningful because it…
Mobile apps offer significant benefits, but their privacy protections often remain ineffective and confusing for users. While prior work mainly analyzes app privacy vulnerabilities, few approaches help users understand, set, and enforce…
An increasing number of mental health services are offered through mobile systems, a paradigm called mHealth. Although there is an unprecedented growth in the adoption of mHealth systems, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about…
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…
This paper investigates changes over time in the behavior of Android ad libraries. Taking a sample of 100,000 apps, we extract and classify the ad libraries. By considering the release dates of the applications that use a specific ad…
In recent years, there has been rapid growth in mobile devices such as smartphones, and a number of applications are developed specifically for the smartphone market. In particular, there are many applications that are ``free'' to the user,…
We present an analysis of 12 million instances of privacy-relevant reviews publicly visible on the Google Play Store that span a 10 year period. By leveraging state of the art NLP techniques, we examine what users have been writing about…
Among populations with limited literacy in emerging digital markets, the adoption of mobile phones, combined with comprehension barriers and poor cybersecurity hygiene, has created hidden privacy risks. This paper examines how informed…
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…
Proximity-based social applications let users interact with people that are currently close to them, by revealing some information about their preferences and whereabouts. This information is acquired through passive geo-localisation and…
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…
Data protection law, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), usually requires a privacy policy before data can be collected from individuals. We analysed 15,145 privacy policies from 26,910 mobile apps in May 2019 (about…
China is currently the country with the largest number of Android smartphone users. We use a combination of static and dynamic code analysis techniques to study the data transmitted by the preinstalled system apps on Android smartphones…