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Mobile phones enable the collection of a wealth of private information, from unique identifiers (e.g., email addresses), to a user's location, to their text messages. This information can be harvested by apps and sent to third parties,…
The latest data protection regulations worldwide, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have established the Right of Access by the Data Subject (RADS), granting users the right to access and obtain a copy of their personal…
Third-party Software Development Kits (SDKs) are widely adopted in Android app development, to effortlessly accelerate development pipelines and enhance app functionality. However, this convenience raises substantial concerns about…
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…
Google has mandated developers to use Data Safety Sections (DSS) to increase transparency in data collection and sharing practices. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of Google's Data Safety Section (DSS) using both…
Ample research has demonstrated that compliance with data protection principles remains limited on the web and mobile. For example, almost none of the apps on the Google Play Store fulfil the minimum requirements regarding consent under EU…
With the rapid development of online technologies and the widespread usage of mobile phones among children, it is crucial to protect their online safety. Some studies reported that online abuse and incidents negatively affect children's…
With the requirements and emphases on privacy transparency placed by regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, the Google Play Store requires Android developers to more responsibly communicate their apps' privacy practices to potential users by…
An average smartphone is equipped with an abundance of sensors to provide a variety of vital functionalities and conveniences. The data from these sensors can be collected in order to find trends or discover interesting correlations in the…
With millions of apps that can be downloaded from official or third-party market, Android has become one of the most popular mobile platforms today. These apps help people in all kinds of ways and thus have access to lots of user's data…
Mobile apps offer significant benefits, but their privacy protections often remain ineffective and confusing for users. While prior work mainly analyzes app privacy vulnerabilities, few approaches help users understand, set, and enforce…
End-users seldom read verbose privacy policies, leading app stores like Google Play to mandate simplified data safety declarations as a user-friendly alternative. However, these self-declared disclosures often contradict the full privacy…
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…
The digital age has brought a world of opportunity to children. Connectivity can be a game-changer for some of the world's most marginalized children. However, while legislatures around the world have enacted regulations to protect…
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) provides California residents with a range of enhanced privacy protections and rights. Our research investigated the extent to which Android app developers comply with the provisions of the CCPA…
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…
Nowadays, privacy has become a very serious issue with smart and mobile platforms. Users tend to allow intrusive apps access much sensible information without really knowing the potential threats. To solve this issue several solutions (e.g.…
Android apps can hold secret strings of themselves such as cloud service credentials or encryption keys. Leakage of such secret strings can induce unprecedented consequences like monetary losses or leakage of user private information. In…
The transparency and privacy behavior of mobile browsers has remained widely unexplored by the research community. In fact, as opposed to regular Android apps, mobile browsers may present contradicting privacy behaviors. On the one end,…
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…