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ICSE 2021
Mon 17 May - Sat 5 June 2021

Millions of mobile apps have been available through various app markets. Although most app markets have enforced a number of automated or even manual mechanisms to vet each app before it is released to the market, thousands of low-quality apps still exist in different markets, some of which violate the explicitly specified market policies. In order to identify these violations accurately and timely, we resort to user comments, which can form an immediate feedback for app market maintainers, to identify undesired behaviors that violate market policies, including security-related user concerns. Specifically, we present the first large-scale study to detect and characterize the correlations between user comments and market policies. First, we propose CHAMP, an approach that adopts text mining and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to extract semantic rules through a semi-automated process, and classifies comments into 26 pre-defined types of undesired behaviors that violate market policies. Our evaluation on real-world user comments shows that it achieves both high precision and recall (> 0.9) in classifying comments for undesired behaviors. Then, we curate a large-scale comment dataset (over 3 million user comments) from apps in Google Play and 8 popular alternative Android app markets, and apply CHAMP to understand the characteristics of undesired behavior comments in the wild. The results confirm our speculation that user comments can be used to pinpoint suspicious apps that violate policies declared by app markets. The study also reveals that policy violations are widespread in many app markets despite their extensive vetting efforts. CHAMP can be a whistle blower that assigns policy-violation scores and identifies most informative comments for apps.

Tue 25 May

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

10:30 - 11:30
1.1.4. Obtaining Information from App User Reviews #1Technical Track at Blended Sessions Room 4 +12h
Chair(s): Patricia Lago Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
10:30
20m
Paper
Identifying Key Features from App User ReviewsTechnical Track
Technical Track
Huayao Wu Nanjing University, Wenjun Deng Nanjing University, Xintao Niu Nanjing University, Changhai Nie Nanjing University
Pre-print Media Attached
10:50
20m
Paper
CHAMP: Characterizing Undesired App Behaviors from User Comments based on Market PoliciesTechnical Track
Technical Track
Yangyu Hu Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Haoyu Wang Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Tiantong Ji Case Western Reserve University, Xusheng Xiao Case Western Reserve University, Xiapu Luo The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Peng Gao University of California, Berkeley, Yao Guo Peking University
Pre-print Media Attached
11:10
20m
Paper
Prioritize Crowdsourced Test Reports via Deep Screenshot UnderstandingTechnical Track
Technical Track
Shengcheng Yu Nanjing University, Chunrong Fang Nanjing University, Zhenfei Cao Nanjing University, Xu Wang Nanjing University, Tongyu Li Nanjing University, Zhenyu Chen Nanjing University
Pre-print Media Attached
22:30 - 23:30
1.1.4. Obtaining Information from App User Reviews #1Technical Track at Blended Sessions Room 4
22:30
20m
Paper
Identifying Key Features from App User ReviewsTechnical Track
Technical Track
Huayao Wu Nanjing University, Wenjun Deng Nanjing University, Xintao Niu Nanjing University, Changhai Nie Nanjing University
Pre-print Media Attached
22:50
20m
Paper
CHAMP: Characterizing Undesired App Behaviors from User Comments based on Market PoliciesTechnical Track
Technical Track
Yangyu Hu Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Haoyu Wang Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Tiantong Ji Case Western Reserve University, Xusheng Xiao Case Western Reserve University, Xiapu Luo The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Peng Gao University of California, Berkeley, Yao Guo Peking University
Pre-print Media Attached
23:10
20m
Paper
Prioritize Crowdsourced Test Reports via Deep Screenshot UnderstandingTechnical Track
Technical Track
Shengcheng Yu Nanjing University, Chunrong Fang Nanjing University, Zhenfei Cao Nanjing University, Xu Wang Nanjing University, Tongyu Li Nanjing University, Zhenyu Chen Nanjing University
Pre-print Media Attached