Longitudinal Analysis of Android Ad Library Permissions
This addresses privacy and security risks for Android users by tracking ad library behavior, but it is incremental as it builds on existing analysis methods.
The paper analyzed changes in Android ad library permissions over time by sampling 100,000 apps and building a chronological map, finding that most permissions increased and more libraries used high-risk 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.