Related papers: ModZoo: A Large-Scale Study of Modded Android Apps…
Mobile gaming apps are woven into children's daily lives. Given their ongoing cognitive and emotional development, children are especially vulnerable and depend on designs that safeguard their well-being. When apps feature manipulative…
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…
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,…
Download fraud is a prevalent threat in mobile App markets, where fraudsters manipulate the number of downloads of Apps via various cheating approaches. Purchased fake downloads can mislead recommendation and search algorithms and further…
There is little information from independent sources in the public domain about mobile malware infection rates. The only previous independent estimate (0.0009%) [12], was based on indirect measurements obtained from domain name resolution…
To satisfy varying customer needs, device vendors and OS providers often rely on the open-source nature of the Android OS and offer customized versions of the Android OS. When a new version of the Android OS is released, device vendors and…
A recently published pre-print titled 'GDPR and the Lost Generation of Innovative Apps' by Jan{\ss}en et al. observes that a third of apps on the Google Play Store disappeared from this app store around the introduction of the GDPR in May…
Repackaging is a serious threat to the Android ecosystem as it deprives app developers of their benefits, contributes to spreading malware on users' devices, and increases the workload of market maintainers. In the space of six years, the…
The ability to identify the author responsible for a given software object is critical for many research studies and for enhancing software transparency and accountability. However, as opposed to other application markets like iOS,…
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…
Mobile apps are predominantly integrated with cloud services to benefit from enhanced functionalities. Adopting authentication using secrets such as API keys is crucial to ensure secure mobile-cloud interactions. However, developers often…
Market and user characteristics of mobile apps make their release management different from proprietary software products and web services. Despite the wealth of information regarding users' feedback on an app, an in-depth analysis of app…
Although mobile ad frauds have been widespread, state-of-the-art approaches in the literature have mainly focused on detecting the so-called static placement frauds, where only a single UI state is involved and can be identified based on…
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…
Google Play's policy forbids the use of incentivized installs, ratings, and reviews to manipulate the placement of apps. However, there still exist apps that incentivize installs for other apps on the platform. To understand how…
Parental control applications, software tools designed to manage and monitor children's online activities, serve as essential safeguards for parents in the digital age. However, their usage has sparked concerns about security and privacy…
App developers aim to create apps that cater to the needs of different types of users. This development approach, also known as the "one-size-fits-all" strategy, involves combining various functionalities into one app. However, this…
Regulators and browsers increasingly restrict user tracking to protect users' privacy online. In two large-scale empirical studies, we study the economic implications for publishers relying on selling advertising space to finance their…
Many phone vendors use Android as their underlying OS, but often extend it to add new functionality and to make it compatible with their specific phones. When a new version of Android is released, phone vendors need to merge or re-apply…
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…