Related papers: PrivacyAssist: A User-Centric Agent Framework for …
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…
As technology and technology companies have grown in power, ubiquity, and societal influence, some companies -- and notably some mobile apps -- have come to be perceived as privacy threats. Prior work has considered how various factors…
We present an analysis of 12 million instances of privacy-relevant reviews publicly visible on the Google Play Store that span a 10 year period. By leveraging state of the art NLP techniques, we examine what users have been writing about…
Android apps must work correctly even if their execution is interrupted by external events. For instance, an app must work properly even if a phone call is received, or after its layout is redrawn because the smartphone has been rotated.…
Mobile gaming applications (apps) have become increasingly pervasive, including a growing number of games designed for children. Despite their popularity, these apps often integrate complex analytics, advertising, and attribution…
The Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe, provides a de facto standard for requesting, recording, and managing user consent from European end-users. This framework has…
Smartphone apps usually have access to sensitive user data such as contacts, geo-location, and account credentials and they might share such data to external entities through the Internet or with other apps. Confidentiality of user data…
While protecting user data is essential, software developers often fail to fulfill privacy requirements. However, the reasons why they struggle with privacy-compliant implementation remain unclear. Is it due to a lack of knowledge, or is it…
The purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is to provide improved privacy protection. If an app controls personal data from users, it needs to be compliant with GDPR. However, GDPR lists general rules rather than exact…
This article explores the gaps that can manifest when using a large language model (LLM) to obtain simplified interpretations of data practices from a complex privacy policy. We exemplify these gaps to showcase issues in accuracy,…
Fragmentation is a serious problem in the Android ecosystem. This problem is mainly caused by the fast evolution of the system itself and the various customizations independently maintained by different smartphone manufacturers. Many…
Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) blend the advantages of web and native apps, offering features like offline access, push notifications, and installability. Beyond these, modern PWAs are increasingly granted system-level capabilities…
Mobile apps used by children often make use of harmful techniques, such as data tracking and targeted advertising. Previous research has suggested that developers face several systemic challenges in designing apps that prioritise children's…
Existing research typically treats privacy policies as flat, uniform text, extracting information without regard for the document's logical hierarchy. Disregard for structural cues of section headings designed to guide the reader, often…
Mobile location-based services (LBSs) empowered by mobile crowdsourcing provide users with context-aware intelligent services based on user locations. As smartphones are capable of collecting and disseminating massive user location-embedded…
Smartphones hold important private information, yet users routinely expose this information to questionable applications written by developers they know nothing about. Users may be tempted to think of smartphones as old-style dumb phones,…
This paper presents a novel application of large language models (LLMs) to enhance user comprehension of privacy policies through an interactive dialogue agent. We demonstrate that LLMs significantly outperform traditional models in tasks…
User profiling, the practice of collecting user information for personalized recommendations, has become widespread, driving progress in technology. However, this growth poses a threat to user privacy, as devices often collect sensitive…
Android employs a permission framework that empowers users to either accept or deny sharing their private data (for example, location) with an app. However, many apps tend to crash when they are denied permission, leaving users no choice…
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…