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While there have been various studies towards Android apps and their development, there is limited discussion of the broader class of apps that fall in the fake area. Fake apps and their development are distinct from official apps and…
The Android ecosystem faces a notable challenge known as fragmentation, which denotes the extensive diversity within the system. This issue is mainly related to differences in system versions, device hardware specifications, and…
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…
In today's digitized world, software systems must support users in understanding both how to interact with a system and why certain behaviors occur. This study investigates whether explanation needs, classified from user reviews, can be…
This paper presents a large-scale analysis of fingerprinting-like behavior in the mobile application ecosystem. We take a market-based approach, focusing on third-party tracking as enabled by applications' common use of third-party SDKs.…
Data aggregators collect large amount of information about individual users and create detailed online behavioral profiles of individuals. Behavioral profiles benefit users by improving products and services. However, they have also raised…
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…
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…
Due to the convenience of access-on-demand to information and business solutions, mobile apps have become an important asset in the digital world. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, app developers have joined the response effort in…
As social networking takes to the mobile world, smartphone apps provide users with ever-changing ways to interact with each other. Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of apps have entered the market offering end-to-end…
Due to Android's open source feature and low barriers to entry for developers, millions of developers and third-party organizations have been attracted into the Android ecosystem. However, over 90 percent of mobile malware are found…
Users need to configure default apps when they first start using their devices. The privacy configurations of the default apps do not always match what users think they have initially enabled. We first systematically evaluated the privacy…
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…
Mobile applications (apps) have become an essential part of everyday life, offering convenient access to services such as banking, healthcare, and shopping. With these apps handling sensitive personal and financial data, ensuring their…
Android apps are built on APIs that abstract core Android system functionalities. These APIs are officially documented in multiple files distributed with the Android source code or SDK, which we collectively refer to as Android API Lists…
Text entry makes up about one-fourth of the smartphone interaction events, and is known to be challenging and difficult. However, there has been little study about the characteristics of text entry in the context of smartphone app usage. In…
Mobile apps provide new opportunities to people with disabilities to act independently in the world. Motivated by this trend, researchers have conducted empirical studies by using the inaccessibility issue rate of each page (i.e., screen…
As the adoption of smart devices continues to permeate all aspects of our lives, user privacy concerns have become more pertinent than ever. Privacy policies outline the data handling practices of these devices. Prior work in the domains of…
Mobile gaming applications (apps) have become increasingly pervasive, including a growing number of games designed for children. Despite their popularity, these apps often integrate complex analytics, advertising, and attribution…
Prior studies on mobile app analysis often analyze apps across different categories or focus on a small set of apps within a category. These studies either provide general insights for an entire app store which consists of millions of apps,…