Automated testing to detect status data loss in Android applications

Abstract

When user installs an Android app, it is expected that the data should be persistent at all states, which requires saving the instance data for all the activities. An app can be paused or sent to the background due to other interruptions or user intervention. It is difficult for the programmer to test this issue for all the activities. This results the issue of data loss, the information/details entered by user in the app are not saved when there is any interruption. This results in degrading the user experience because user should enter the information each time there is an interruption. This research proposes a tool, DroidDLP, a Data Loss Preventor in Android, which will detect the information loss from a given android application. We have tested 395 applications and found 12 applications with the issue of data loss. This approach is proved highly accurate and reliable to find the apps with this defect, which can be used by android developers to avoid such errors.