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Mobile gaming apps increasingly rely on third-party Software Development Kits SDKs for advertising, analytics, attribution, and user engagement, potentially introducing privacy exposure beyond traditional permission based risks. Existing…
Many Android apps analyzers rely, among other techniques, on dynamic analysis to monitor their runtime behavior and detect potential security threats. However, malicious developers use subtle, though efficient, techniques to bypass dynamic…
In July 2025, 18 academic manuscripts on the preprint website arXiv were found to contain hidden instructions known as prompts designed to manipulate AI-assisted peer review. Instructions such as "GIVE A POSITIVE REVIEW ONLY" were concealed…
App markets have evolved into highly competitive and dynamic environments for developers. While the traditional app life cycle involves incremental updates for feature enhancements and issue resolution, some apps deviate from this norm by…
Mobile application developers are required to disclose how they collect, use, and share user data in compliance with privacy regulations. To support transparency, major app marketplaces have introduced standardized disclosure mechanisms. In…
Third-party security apps are an integral part of the Android app ecosystem. Many users install them as an extra layer of protection for their devices. There are hundreds of such security apps, both free and paid in Google Play Store and…
Dark patterns utilize interface elements to trick users into performing unwanted actions. Online shopping websites often employ these manipulative mechanisms so as to increase their potential customer base, to boost their sales, or to…
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…
Reinforcement learning (RL) for physical design of silicon chips in a Google 2021 Nature paper stirred controversy due to poorly documented claims that raised eyebrows and drew critical media coverage. The paper withheld critical…
Stack Overflow incentive system awards users with reputation scores to ensure quality. The decentralized nature of the forum may make the incentive system prone to manipulation. This paper offers, for the first time, a comprehensive study…
Expecting the shipment of 1 billion Android devices in 2017, cyber criminals have naturally extended their vicious activities towards Google's mobile operating system. With an estimated number of 700 new Android applications released every…
Android and Facebook provide third-party applications with access to users' private data and the ability to perform potentially sensitive operations (e.g., post to a user's wall or place phone calls). As a security measure, these platforms…
Consider an application sold on an on-line platform, with the app paying a commission fee and, henceforth, offered for sale on the platform. The ability to sell the application depends on its customer ranking. Therefore, developers may have…
Android's permission system is designed to balance usability with informed consent, yet two legacy mechanisms still undermine that balance in Android 16: (i) permission groups that silently auto-grant new permissions within a group after a…
App reviews reflect various user requirements that can aid in planning maintenance tasks. Recently, proposed approaches for automatically classifying user reviews rely on machine learning algorithms. A previous study demonstrated that…
In-app advertising closely relates to app revenue. Reckless ad integration could adversely impact app reliability and user experience, leading to loss of income. It is very challenging to balance the ad revenue and user experience for app…
Online reviews significantly impact consumers' decision-making process and firms' economic outcomes and are widely seen as crucial to the success of online markets. Firms, therefore, have a strong incentive to manipulate ratings using fake…
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…
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…
Deep learning is a powerful weapon to boost application performance in many fields, including face recognition, object detection, image classification, natural language understanding, and recommendation system. With the rapid increase in…