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The advent of MiniApps, operating within larger SuperApps, has revolutionized user experiences by offering a wide range of services without the need for individual app downloads. However, this convenience has raised significant privacy…
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…
We conduct a large-scale measurement of developers' insecure practices leading to mini-app to super-app authentication bypass, among which hard-coding developer secrets for such authentication is a major contributor. We also analyze the…
Mini-applications, commonly referred to as mini-apps, are compact software programs embedded within larger applications or platforms, offering targeted functionality without the need for separate installations. Typically web-based or…
Super-apps have emerged as comprehensive platforms integrating various mini-apps to provide diverse services. While super-apps offer convenience and enriched functionality, they can introduce new privacy risks. This paper reveals a new…
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…
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…
Mobile mini-programs in WeChat have gained significant popularity since their debut in 2017, reaching a scale similar to that of Android apps in the Play Store. Like Google, Tencent, the provider of WeChat, offers APIs to support the…
Privacy policies are intended to inform users about how software systems collect and handle data, yet they often remain vague or incomplete. This paper presents an empirical study of patterns in log-related statements within privacy…
Nowadays the app-in-app paradigm is becoming increasingly popular, and sub-apps have become an important form of mobile applications. WeChat, the leading app-in-app platform, provides millions of sub-apps that can be used for online…
A "privacy behavior" in software is an action where the software uses personal information for a service or a feature, such as a website using location to provide content relevant to a user. Programmers are required by regulations or…
The past few years have witnessed a boom of miniapps, as lightweight applications, miniapps are of great importance in the mobile internet sector. Consequently, the security of miniapps can directly impact compromising the integrity of…
As a new format of mobile application, mini programs, which function within a larger app and are built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript web technology, have become the way to do almost everything in China. This paper presents our research on…
Mobile applications, particularly those from social media platforms such as WeChat and TikTok, are evolving into "super apps" that offer a wide range of services such as instant messaging and media sharing, e-commerce, e-learning, and…
Access to privacy-sensitive information on Android is a growing concern in the mobile community. Albeit Google Play recently introduced some privacy guidelines, it is still an open problem to soundly verify whether apps actually comply with…
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…
End-users seldom read verbose privacy policies, leading app stores like Google Play to mandate simplified data safety declarations as a user-friendly alternative. However, these self-declared disclosures often contradict the full privacy…
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…
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…
We study whether phone-use agents respect privacy while completing benign mobile tasks. This question has remained hard to answer because privacy-compliant behavior is not operationalized for phone-use agents, and ordinary apps do not…