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The value of mobile apps is traditionally measured by metrics such as the number of downloads, installations, or user ratings. A problem with these measures is that they reflect actual usage at most indirectly. Indeed, analytic companies…
Tracking is a highly privacy-invasive data collection practice that has been ubiquitous in mobile apps for many years due to its role in supporting advertising-based revenue models. In response, Apple introduced two significant changes with…
Google has mandated developers to use Data Safety Sections (DSS) to increase transparency in data collection and sharing practices. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of Google's Data Safety Section (DSS) using both…
The wide adoption of mobile devices and social media platforms have dramatically increased the collection and sharing of personal information. More and more frequently, users are called to take decisions concerning the disclosure of their…
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…
Mobile applications, mobile apps for short, have proven their usefulness in enhancing service provisioning across a multitude of domains that range from smart healthcare, to mobile commerce, and areas of context sensitive computing. In…
Privacy policies are legal documents that describe how a website will collect, use, and distribute a user's data. Unfortunately, such documents are often overly complicated and filled with legal jargon; making it difficult for users to…
Modern websites frequently use and embed third-party services to facilitate web development, connect to social media, or for monetization. This often introduces privacy issues as the inclusion of third-party services on a website can allow…
With the increasing concerns around privacy and the enforcement of data privacy laws, many websites now provide users with privacy controls. However, locating these controls can be challenging, as they are frequently hidden within multiple…
Data dashboards are designed to help users manage data collected about them. However, prior work showed that exposure to some dashboards, notably Google's My Activity dashboard, results in significant decreases in perceived concern and…
Privacy policy documents are often lengthy, complex, and difficult for non-expert users to interpret, leading to a lack of transparency regarding the collection, processing, and sharing of personal data. As concerns over online privacy…
With the popularity of smartphones, mobile applications (apps) have penetrated the daily life of people. Although apps provide rich functionalities, they also access a large amount of personal information simultaneously. As a result,…
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…
Smartphone manufacturer provided default features (e.g., default location services, iCloud, Google Assistant, ad tracking) enhance the usability and extend the functionality of these devices. Prior studies have highlighted smartphone…
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…
In modern information systems different information features, about the same individual, are often collected and managed by autonomous data collection services that may have different privacy policies. Answering many end-users' legitimate…
The apps installed on a smartphone can reveal much information about a user, such as their medical conditions, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. Additionally, the presence or absence of particular apps on a smartphone can inform an…
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…
The latest data protection regulations worldwide, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have established the Right of Access by the Data Subject (RADS), granting users the right to access and obtain a copy of their personal…
Mobile applications increasingly rely on sensor data to infer user context and deliver personalized experiences. Yet the mechanisms behind this personalization remain opaque to users and researchers alike. This paper presents a sandbox…