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Targeted advertising is fueled by the comprehensive tracking of users' online activity. As a result, advertising companies, such as Google and Meta, encourage website administrators to not only install tracking scripts on their websites but…
Profiling users for the purpose of targeted advertisements or other kinds of personalization is very popular on the internet. But besides the benefits of individually tailored news feeds and shopping recommendation research has shown that…
In 2020, Google announced it would disable third-party cookies in the Chrome browser to improve user privacy. In order to continue to enable interest-based advertising while mitigating risks of individualized user tracking, Google proposed…
YouTube has today become the primary news source for many users, which raises concerns about the role its recommendation algorithm can play in the spread of misinformation and political polarization. Prior work in this area has mainly…
This paper presents a sociotechnical vision for managing personal data, including cookies, within Web browsers. We first present our vision for a future of semi-automated data governance on the Web, using policy languages to describe data…
The overturning of the Internet Privacy Rules by the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) in late March 2017 allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to collect, share and sell their customers' Web browsing data without their consent.…
As a result of the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, European users encounter cookie banners on almost every website. Many of such banners are implemented by Consent Management Providers (CMPs), who respect the IAB Europe's Transparency and…
Third-party services form an integral part of the mobile ecosystem: they allow app developers to add features such as performance analytics and social network integration, and to monetize their apps by enabling user tracking and targeted ad…
On the modern web, trackers and advertisers frequently construct and monetize users' detailed behavioral profiles without consent. Despite various studies on web tracking mechanisms and advertisements, there has been no rigorous study…
User data is the primary input of digital advertising, fueling the free Internet as we know it. As a result, web companies invest a lot in elaborate tracking mechanisms to acquire user data that can sell to data markets and advertisers.…
Data protection regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, require websites and embedded third-parties, especially advertisers, to seek user consent before they can collect and process user data. Only when the users opt in, can these entities…
The rise of cookie paywalls ('pay-or-ok' models) has prompted growing debates around the right to privacy and data protection, monetisation, and the legitimacy of user consent. Despite their increasing use across sectors, limited research…
Retargeting ads are increasingly prevalent on the Internet as their effectiveness has been shown to outperform conventional targeted ads. Retargeting ads are not only based on users' interests, but also on their intents, i.e. commercial…
While advertising has become commonplace in today's online interactions, there is a notable dearth of research investigating the extent to which browser fingerprinting is harnessed for user tracking and targeted advertising. Prior studies…
We quantify Facebook's ability to build shadow profiles by tracking individuals across the web, irrespective of whether they are users of the social network. For a representative sample of US Internet users, we find that Facebook is able to…
Web tracking through third-party cookies is considered a threat to users' privacy and is supposed to be abandoned in the near future. Recently, Google proposed the Topics API framework as a privacy-friendly alternative for behavioural…
Web browsers provide the security foundation for our online experiences. Significant research has been done into the security of browsers themselves, but relatively little investigation has been done into how they interact with the…
In this paper we argue that policies are an increasing concern for organizations that are operating a web site. Examples of policies that are relevant in the domain of the web address issues such as privacy of personal data, accessibility…
The number of computers, tablets and smartphones is increasing rapidly, which entails the ownership and use of multiple devices to perform online tasks. As people move across devices to complete these tasks, their identities becomes…
Google's recent update to the manifest file for Chrome browser extensions, transitioning from manifest version 2 (MV2) to manifest version 3 (MV3), has raised concerns among users and ad blocker providers, who worry that the new…