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The increasing attraction of mobile apps has inspired researchers to analyze apps from different perspectives. As with any software product, apps have different attributes such as size, content maturity, rating, category, or number of…
With over 500,000 commits and more than 700 contributors, the Android platform is undoubtedly one of the largest industrial-scale software projects. This project provides the Android API, and developers heavily rely on this API to develop…
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…
As mobile app usage continues to rise, so does the generation of extensive user interaction data, which includes actions such as swiping, zooming, or the time spent on a screen. Apps often collect a large amount of this data and claim to…
Although there are over 1,600,000 third-party Android apps in the Google Play Store, little has been conclusively shown about how their individual (and collective) permission usage has evolved over time. Recently, Android 6 overhauled the…
Third-party security apps are an integral part of the Android app ecosystem. Many users install them as an extra layer of protection for their devices. There are hundreds of such security apps, both free and paid in Google Play Store and…
Application markets provide a communication channel between app developers and their end-users in form of app reviews, which allow users to provide feedback about the apps. Although security and privacy in mobile apps are one of the biggest…
With the rapid growth of mobile apps, users' concerns about their privacy have become increasingly prominent. Android app logs serve as crucial computer resources, aiding developers in debugging and monitoring the status of Android apps,…
The ubiquity of computing devices has led to an increased need to ensure not only that the applications deployed on them are correct with respect to their specifications, but also that the devices are used in an appropriate manner,…
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…
The ubiquity of mobile applications has increased dramatically in recent years, opening up new opportunities for cyber attackers and heightening security concerns in the mobile ecosystem. As a result, researchers and practitioners have…
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.…
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…
Persuasive designs become prevalent on smartphones, and an increasing number of users report having problematic smartphone use behaviours. Persuasive designs in smartphones might be accountable for the development and reinforcement of such…
Smartphone technology has drastically improved over the past decade. These improvements have seen the creation of specialized health applications, which offer consumers a range of health-related activities such as tracking and checking…
Mobile devices have access to personal, potentially sensitive data, and there is a large number of mobile applications and third-party libraries that transmit this information over the network to remote servers (including app developer…
Despite over 3.5 million Android apps and 200+ million Android Auto-compatible vehicles, only a few hundred apps support Android Auto due to platform-specific compliance requirements. Android Auto mandates service-based architectures in…
The widespread use of smartphones in daily life has raised concerns about privacy and security among researchers and practitioners. Privacy issues are generally highly prevalent in mobile applications, particularly targeting the Android…
The proliferation of mobile applications and the subsequent sharing of personal data with service and application providers have given rise to substantial privacy concerns. Application marketplaces have introduced mechanisms to conform to…
Android fragmentation refers to the overwhelming diversity of Android devices and OS versions. These lead to the impossibility of testing an app on every supported device, leaving a number of compatibility bugs scattered in the community…