Seamless In-App Ad Blocking on Stock Android

Advertisements in mobile applications have been shown to be a true danger to the users' privacy and security. Unfortunately, all existing solutions for protecting users from this threat are not simultaneously satisfying in terms of effectiveness or deployability. Leveraging recent advances in app virtualization on Android, we present in this paper a solution for in-app ad-blocking that provides a high level of effectiveness in blocking ads while at the same time being favorable for end-user deployment by abstaining from OS modifications or any elevated privileges. We discuss the technical challenges and their solutions for robustly stripping ads from apps while preserving the apps' functionality.