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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…
The super app paradigm, exemplified by platforms such as WeChat and AliPay, has revolutionized the mobile app landscape by enabling third-party developers to deploy add-ons within these apps. These add-ons, known as miniapps, leverage user…
The rise of mobile apps has brought greater convenience and many options for users. However, many apps use analytics services to collect a wide range of user interaction data, with privacy policies often failing to reveal the types of…
With smartphone technologies enhanced way of interacting with the world around us, it has also been paving the way for easier access to our private and personal information. This has been amplified by the existence of numerous embedded…
Privacy policies are long, complex documents that end-users seldom read. Privacy labels aim to ameliorate these issues by providing succinct summaries of salient data practices. In December 2020, Apple began requiring that app developers…
Context: As mobile applications (Apps) widely spread over our society and life, various personal information is constantly demanded by Apps in exchange for more intelligent and customized functionality. An increasing number of users are…
Everyday services of society increasingly rely on mobile applications, resulting in a conflicting situation between the possibility of participation on the one side and user privacy and digital freedom on the other. In order to protect…
Many Android applications collect data from users. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires vendors to faithfully disclose which data their apps collect. This task is complicated because many apps use…
Privacy, security, and accessibility, like ethical concerns in mobile applications (a.k.a. apps), commonly subsumed under non-functional requirements, are generally reported by users through app reviews available in app stores. However,…
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…
Privacy regulations protect and promote the privacy of individuals by requiring mobile apps to provide a privacy policy that explains what personal information is collected and how these apps process this information. However, developers…
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…
Android applications collecting data from users must protect it according to the current legal frameworks. Such data protection has become even more important since the European Union rolled out the General Data Protection Regulation…
Third-party Software Development Kits (SDKs) are widely adopted in Android app development, to effortlessly accelerate development pipelines and enhance app functionality. However, this convenience raises substantial concerns about…
Android has been the most popular smartphone system, with multiple platform versions (e.g., KITKAT and Lollipop) active in the market. To manage the application's compatibility with one or more platform versions, Android allows apps to…
While protecting user data is essential, software developers often fail to fulfill privacy requirements. However, the reasons why they struggle with privacy-compliant implementation remain unclear. Is it due to a lack of knowledge, or is it…
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…
Digital lending applications, commonly referred to as loan apps, have become a primary channel for microcredit in emerging markets. However, many of these apps demand excessive permissions and misuse sensitive user data for coercive…
As a key supplement to privacy policies that are known to be lengthy and difficult to read, Apple has launched the app privacy labels, which purportedly help users more easily understand an app's privacy practices. However, false and…
Android applications may leak privacy data carelessly or maliciously. In this work we perform inter-component data-flow analysis to detect privacy leaks between components of Android applications. Unlike all current approaches, our tool,…