Do Android Users Write About Electric Sheep? Examining Consumer Reviews in Google Play

Consumer reviews and star ratings are integral to markets. The content of reviews help consumers whether an application is "good" or not. Since rely heavily on reviews when selecting applications, wanted to know what was being written about in reviews. In we wanted to know if users were discussing privacy security risks of an application, and if not, what were they about instead? In our work, we manually analyzed users' reviews to see what they write about when Google Play applications. Overall, only 1% of our mentioned application permissions. We also found that a subset of reviews relating to preinstalled applications and that requested a user's rating had underlying and security implications. The majority of reviews on the quality of applications: people often described an using an adjective (e. g., "great app" or "horrible"), about its feature/functionality, specifically said if the worked or not, and/or put their phone or tablet model the review. We also found that sentiment did influence ratings of the applications. In general, the overall star of our sample was overwhelmingly positive, suggesting Google Play is no different from other e-commerce sites.