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Private messaging over internet related services is difficult to implement. Regular end-to-end encryption messaging systems are prone to man in the middle attacks and only hide messages but not the identity of its users. For example,…
E-commerce mobile applications are central to global financial transactions, making their security and privacy crucial. In this study, we analyze 92 top-grossing Android e-commerce apps (58 U.S.-based and 34 international) using MobSF,…
Crowdsourcing enables application developers to benefit from large and diverse datasets at a low cost. Specifically, mobile crowdsourcing (MCS) leverages users' devices as sensors to perform geo-located data collection. The collection of…
The industry for children's apps is thriving at the cost of children's privacy: these apps routinely disclose children's data to multiple data trackers and ad networks. As children spend increasing time online, such exposure accumulates to…
ChatGPT has enabled third-party developers to create plugins to expand ChatGPT's capabilities.These plugins are distributed through OpenAI's plugin store, making them easily accessible to users. With ChatGPT as the backbone, this app…
The Internet of Things (IoT) systems are designed and developed either as standalone applications from the ground-up or with the help of IoT middleware platforms. They are designed to support different kinds of scenarios, such as smart…
With the development of foundation AI technologies, task-executable voice assistants (VAs) have become more popular, enhancing user convenience and expanding device functionality. Android task-executable VAs are applications that are…
The ever increasing popularity of Facebook and other Online Social Networks has left a wealth of personal and private data on the web, aggregated and readily accessible for broad and automatic retrieval. Protection from both undesired…
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…
In this paper, we review the state of the art of privacy-preserving schemes for ad hoc social networks, including, mobile social networks (MSNs) and vehicular social networks (VSNs). Specifically, we select and in-detail examine…
WhatsApp, with 3.5 billion active accounts as of early 2025, is the world's largest instant messaging platform. Given its massive user base, WhatsApp plays a critical role in global communication. To initiate conversations, users must first…
In this paper, we investigate Saudi parents' privacy concerns regarding their children's smart device applications (apps). To this end, we conducted a survey and analysed 119 responses. Our results show that Saudi parents expressed a high…
With an increasing number of users sharing information online, privacy implications entailing such actions are a major concern. For explicit content, such as user profile or GPS data, devices (e.g. mobile phones) as well as web services…
Android is the most popular operating system with billions of active devices. Unfortunately, its popularity and openness makes it attractive for unwanted apps, i.e., malware and potentially unwanted programs (PUP). In Android, app…
Privacy policies are the primary channel through which companies inform users about their data collection and sharing practices. These policies are often long and difficult to comprehend. Short notices based on information extracted from…
Privacy labels -- standardized, compact representations of data collection and data use practices -- are often presented as a solution to the shortcomings of privacy policies. Apple introduced mandatory privacy labels for apps in its App…
With the recent hype around the Metaverse and NFTs, Web3 is getting more and more popular. The goal of Web3 is to decentralize the web via decentralized applications. Wallets play a crucial role as they act as an interface between these…
The widespread use of smartphones and tablets has made society heavily reliant on mobile applications (apps) for accessing various resources and services. These apps often handle sensitive personal, financial, and health data, making app…
The open-source nature of the Android OS makes it possible for manufacturers to ship custom versions of the OS along with a set of pre-installed apps, often for product differentiation. Some device vendors have recently come under scrutiny…
In this paper we present the first population-level, city-scale analysis of application usage on smartphones. Using deep packet inspection at the network operator level, we obtained a geo-tagged dataset with more than 6 million unique…