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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…
The prevalent engagement with mobile apps underscores the importance of understanding their data practices. Transparency plays a crucial role in this context, ensuring users to be informed and give consent before any data access occurs.…
As a key supplement to privacy policies that are known to be lengthy and difficult to read, Apple has launched the app privacy labels, which purportedly help users more easily understand an app's privacy practices. However, false and…
Apple introduced privacy labels in Dec. 2020 as a way for developers to report the privacy behaviors of their apps. While Apple does not validate labels, they also require developers to provide a privacy policy, which offers an important…
Privacy policies are long, complex documents that end-users seldom read. Privacy labels aim to ameliorate these issues by providing succinct summaries of salient data practices. In December 2020, Apple began requiring that app developers…
The misuse of Large Language Models (LLMs) to infer emotions from text for malicious purposes, known as emotion inference attacks, poses a significant threat to user privacy. In this paper, we investigate the potential of Apple…
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…
In December of 2020, Apple started to require app developers to self-report privacy label annotations on their apps indicating what data is collected and how it is used.To understand the adoption and shifts in privacy labels in the App…
The need for secure and private Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) on edge and mobile devices has increased the necessity of protecting the architecture of these systems from threats to both security and privacy. With an…
Home confinement, a situation experienced by individuals for reasons ranging from medical quarantines, rehabilitation needs, disability accommodations, and remote working, is a common yet impactful aspect of modern life. While essential in…
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…
Many countries are currently gearing up to use smart-phone apps to perform contact tracing as part of the effort to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent resurgences of the disease after the initial outbreak. With the announcement of the…
Tracking is a highly privacy-invasive data collection practice that has been ubiquitous in mobile apps for many years due to its role in supporting advertising-based revenue models. In response, Apple introduced two significant changes with…
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.…
Finder networks in general, and Apple's Find My network in particular, can pose a grave threat to users' privacy and even health if these networks are abused for stalking. Apple's release of the AirTag, a very affordable tracker covered by…
In June 2016, Apple announced that it will deploy differential privacy for some user data collection in order to ensure privacy of user data, even from Apple. The details of Apple's approach remained sparse. Although several patents have…
Many existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions on mobile devices rely on an extensive collection of sensitive data, raising privacy concerns and often requiring storage for both context and model improvement. Apple's Private Cloud…
While many studies have looked at privacy properties of the Android and Google Play app ecosystem, comparatively much less is known about iOS and the Apple App Store, the most widely used ecosystem in the US. At the same time, there is…
An increasing number of mental health services are offered through mobile systems, a paradigm called mHealth. Although there is an unprecedented growth in the adoption of mHealth systems, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about…
Nowadays, most online services offer different authentication methods that users can set up for multi-factor authentication but also as a recovery method. This configuration must be done thoroughly to prevent an adversary's access while…