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Millions of mobile apps have been available through various app markets. Although most app markets have enforced a number of automated or even manual mechanisms to vet each app before it is released to the market, thousands of low-quality…
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…
Viewing social apps as sociotechnical systems makes clear that they are not mere pieces of technology but mediate human interaction and may unintentionally enable harmful behaviors like online harassment. As more users interact through…
There are over one million apps on Google Play Store and over half a million publishers. Having such a huge number of apps and developers can pose a challenge to app users and new publishers on the store. Discovering apps can be challenging…
Existing research typically treats privacy policies as flat, uniform text, extracting information without regard for the document's logical hierarchy. Disregard for structural cues of section headings designed to guide the reader, often…
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…
Despite regulatory efforts to establish reliable content-rating guidelines for mobile apps, the process of assigning content ratings in the Google Play Store remains self-regulated by the app developers. There is no straightforward method…
Counterfeit apps impersonate existing popular apps in attempts to misguide users to install them for various reasons such as collecting personal information, spreading malware, or simply to increase their advertisement revenue. Many…
Mobile app distribution platforms such as Google Play Store allow users to share their feedback about downloaded apps in the form of a review comment and a corresponding star rating. Typically, the star rating ranges from one to five stars,…
Mobile apps are predominantly integrated with cloud services to benefit from enhanced functionalities. Adopting authentication using secrets such as API keys is crucial to ensure secure mobile-cloud interactions. However, developers often…
Contemporary mobile applications (apps) are designed to track, use, and share users' data, often without their consent, which results in potential privacy and transparency issues. To investigate whether mobile apps have always been…
The pervasiveness of the Android operating system, with the availability of applications almost for everything, is readily accessible in the official Google play store or a dozen alternative third-party markets. Additionally, the vital role…
Android devices are equipped with many pre-installed applications which have the capability of tracking and monitoring users. Although applications coming pre-installed pose a great danger to user security and privacy, they have received…
Application markets provide a communication channel between app developers and their end-users in form of app reviews, which allow users to provide feedback about the apps. Although security and privacy in mobile apps are one of the biggest…
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…
The digital age has brought a world of opportunity to children. Connectivity can be a game-changer for some of the world's most marginalized children. However, while legislatures around the world have enacted regulations to protect…
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…
Download fraud is a prevalent threat in mobile App markets, where fraudsters manipulate the number of downloads of Apps via various cheating approaches. Purchased fake downloads can mislead recommendation and search algorithms and further…
Human values such as honesty, social responsibility, fairness, privacy, and the like are things considered important by individuals and society. Software systems, including mobile software applications (apps), may ignore or violate such…
The impressive growth of smartphone devices in combination with the rising ubiquity of using mobile platforms for sensitive applications such as Internet banking, have triggered a rapid increase in mobile malware. In recent literature, many…