5,922 research outputs found
Longitudinal Analysis of Android Ad Library Permissions
This paper investigates changes over time in the behavior of Android ad
libraries. Taking a sample of 100,000 apps, we extract and classify the ad
libraries. By considering the release dates of the applications that use a
specific ad library version, we estimate the release date for the library, and
thus build a chronological map of the permissions used by various ad libraries
over time. We find that the use of most permissions has increased over the last
several years, and that more libraries are able to use permissions that pose
particular risks to user privacy and security.Comment: Most 201
Measuring third party tracker power across web and mobile
Third-party networks collect vast amounts of data about users via web sites
and mobile applications. Consolidations among tracker companies can
significantly increase their individual tracking capabilities, prompting
scrutiny by competition regulators. Traditional measures of market share, based
on revenue or sales, fail to represent the tracking capability of a tracker,
especially if it spans both web and mobile. This paper proposes a new approach
to measure the concentration of tracking capability, based on the reach of a
tracker on popular websites and apps. Our results reveal that tracker
prominence and parent-subsidiary relationships have significant impact on
accurately measuring concentration
A survey of app store analysis for software engineering
App Store Analysis studies information about applications obtained from app stores. App stores provide a wealth of information derived from users that would not exist had the applications been distributed via previous software deployment methods. App Store Analysis combines this non-technical information with technical information to learn trends and behaviours within these forms of software repositories. Findings from App Store Analysis have a direct and actionable impact on the software teams that develop software for app stores, and have led to techniques for requirements engineering, release planning, software design, security and testing. This survey describes and compares the areas of research that have been explored thus far, drawing out common aspects, trends and directions future research should take to address open problems and challenges
ReCon: Revealing and Controlling PII Leaks in Mobile Network Traffic
It is well known that apps running on mobile devices extensively track and
leak users' personally identifiable information (PII); however, these users
have little visibility into PII leaked through the network traffic generated by
their devices, and have poor control over how, when and where that traffic is
sent and handled by third parties. In this paper, we present the design,
implementation, and evaluation of ReCon: a cross-platform system that reveals
PII leaks and gives users control over them without requiring any special
privileges or custom OSes. ReCon leverages machine learning to reveal potential
PII leaks by inspecting network traffic, and provides a visualization tool to
empower users with the ability to control these leaks via blocking or
substitution of PII. We evaluate ReCon's effectiveness with measurements from
controlled experiments using leaks from the 100 most popular iOS, Android, and
Windows Phone apps, and via an IRB-approved user study with 92 participants. We
show that ReCon is accurate, efficient, and identifies a wider range of PII
than previous approaches.Comment: Please use MobiSys version when referencing this work:
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2906392. 18 pages, recon.meddle.mob
Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem
Third party tracking allows companies to identify users and track their
behaviour across multiple digital services. This paper presents an empirical
study of the prevalence of third-party trackers on 959,000 apps from the US and
UK Google Play stores. We find that most apps contain third party tracking, and
the distribution of trackers is long-tailed with several highly dominant
trackers accounting for a large portion of the coverage. The extent of tracking
also differs between categories of apps; in particular, news apps and apps
targeted at children appear to be amongst the worst in terms of the number of
third party trackers associated with them. Third party tracking is also
revealed to be a highly trans-national phenomenon, with many trackers operating
in jurisdictions outside the EU. Based on these findings, we draw out some
significant legal compliance challenges facing the tracking industry.Comment: Corrected missing company info (Linkedin owned by Microsoft). Figures
for Microsoft and Linkedin re-calculated and added to Table
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