Related papers: Same App, Different Behaviors: Uncovering Device-s…

Despite years of research on testing the usability of mobile applications, our understanding of the issues their users experience still remains fragmented and underexplored. While most earlier studies has provided interesting insights, they…

Vulnerabilities in Android smartphone chipsets have severe consequences, as recent real-world attacks have demonstrated that adversaries can leverage vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code or exfiltrate confidential information. Despite…

Android apps must be able to deal with both stop events, which require immediately stopping the execution of the app without losing state information, and start events, which require resuming the execution of the app at the same point it…

Android utilizes a security mechanism that requires apps to request permission for accessing sensitive user data, e.g., contacts and SMSs, or certain system features, e.g., camera and Internet access. However, Android apps tend to be…

Given the importance of understanding the interaction between mobile devices and their users, app usage patterns have been studied in various contexts. However, prior work has not fully investigated longitudinal changes to app usage…

The Android permission system is a set of controls to regulate access to sensitive data and platform resources (e.g., camera). The fast evolving nature of Android permissions, coupled with inadequate documentation, results in numerous…

Android apps are event-driven, and their execution is often interrupted by external events. This interruption can cause data loss issues that annoy users. For instance, when the screen is rotated, the current app page will be destroyed and…

Numerous tools rely on automatic categorization of Android apps as part of their methodology. However, incorrect categorization can lead to inaccurate outcomes, such as a malware detector wrongly flagging a benign app as malicious. One such…

The major mobile platforms, Android and iOS, have introduced changes that restrict user tracking to improve user privacy, yet apps continue to covertly track users via device fingerprinting. We study the opportunity to improve this dynamic…

The Android market is a place where developers offer paid and-or free apps to users. Free apps are interesting to users because they can try them immediately without incurring a monetary cost. However, free apps often have limited features…

Online advertisers and analytics services (or trackers), are constantly tracking users activities as they access web services either through browsers or a mobile apps. Numerous tools such as browser plugins and specialized mobile apps have…

While smart mobile health apps that adapt to users' progressive individual needs are proliferating, many of them struggle to fulfill their promises due to an inferior user experience. Understanding the concerns of real-world users related…

In my dissertation, I will analyze how the product market position of a mobile app affects its pricing strategies, which in turn impacts an app's monetization process. Using natural language processing and k-mean clustering on apps' text…

Recent developments in the mobile app industry have resulted in various types of mobile apps, each targeting a different need and a specific audience. Consequently, users access distinct apps to complete their information need tasks. This…

Desktop browser extensions have long allowed users to improve their experience online and tackle widespread harms on websites. So far, no equivalent solution exists for mobile apps, despite the fact that individuals now spend significantly…

Despite the growing threat posed by Android malware, the research community is still lacking a comprehensive view of common behaviors and trends exposed by malware families active on the platform. Without such view, the researchers incur…

China is currently the country with the largest number of Android smartphone users. We use a combination of static and dynamic code analysis techniques to study the data transmitted by the preinstalled system apps on Android smartphones…

Explosion of number of smartphone apps and their diversity has created a fertile ground to study behaviour of smartphone users. Patterns of app usage, specifically types of apps and their duration are influenced by the state of the user and…

Failure to consider the characteristics, limitations, and abilities of diverse end-users during mobile apps development may lead to problems for end-users such as accessibility and usability issues. We refer to this class of problems as…

With the proliferation of smart phone, a major growth in the use of apps related to the health category, specifically those concerned with foot health can be observed. Although new, these apps are being used practically for scanning feet…