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To partly address people's concerns over web tracking, Google has created the Ad Settings webpage to provide information about and some choice over the profiles Google creates on users. We present AdFisher, an automated tool that explores…
People have a high level of trust in search engines, especially Google, but only limited knowledge of them, as numerous studies have shown. This leads to the question: To what extent is this trust justified considering the lack of…
Blogs are undoubtedly the richest source of information available in cyberspace. Blogs can be of various natures i.e. personal blogs which contain posts on mixed issues or blogs can be domain specific which contains posts on particular…
After years of speculation, price discrimination in e-commerce driven by the personal information that users leave (involuntarily) online, has started attracting the attention of privacy researchers, regulators, and the press. In our…
Online social networks have enabled new methods and modalities of collaboration and sharing. These advances bring privacy concerns: online social data is more accessible and persistent and simultaneously less contextualized than traditional…
Ensuring the effectiveness of search queries while protecting user privacy remains an open issue. When an Information Retrieval System (IRS) does not protect the privacy of its users, sensitive information may be disclosed through the…
Search engines play an important role in the context of modern elections. By curating information in response to user queries, search engines influence how individuals are informed about election-related developments and perceive the media…
A central role in shaping the experience of users online is played by recommendation algorithms. On the one hand they help retrieving content that best suits users taste, but on the other hand they may give rise to the so called "filter…
Finding a product online can be a challenging task for users. Faceted search interfaces, often in combination with recommenders, can support users in finding a product that fits their preferences. However, those preferences are not always…
The World Wide Web is a vast and continuously changing source of information where searching is a frequent, and sometimes critical, user task. Searching is not always the user's primary goal but an ancillary task that is performed to find…
Recommender systems often struggle with over-specialization, which severely limits users' exposure to diverse content and creates filter bubbles that reduce serendipitous discovery. To address this fundamental limitation, this paper…
Natural interaction with recommendation and personalized search systems has received tremendous attention in recent years. We focus on the challenge of supporting people's understanding and control of these systems and explore a…
Online consumer reviews play a crucial role in guiding purchase decisions by offering insights into product quality, usability, and performance. However, the increasing volume of user-generated reviews has led to information overload,…
Warning: This paper contains content that may be offensive or upsetting. Online search engine auto-completions make it faster for users to search and access information. However, they also have the potential to reinforce and promote…
Recommendation algorithms play a pivotal role in shaping our media choices, which makes it crucial to comprehend their long-term impact on user behavior. These algorithms are often linked to two critical outcomes: homogenization, wherein…
Whereas today's information systems are well-equipped for efficient query handling, their strict mathematical foundations hamper their use for everyday tasks. In daily life, people expect information to be offered in a personalized and…
The concept of privacy is inherently intertwined with human attitudes and behaviours, as most computer systems are primarily designed for human use. Especially in the case of Recommender Systems, which feed on information provided by…
The social media site Flickr allows users to upload their photos, annotate them with tags, submit them to groups, and also to form social networks by adding other users as contacts. Flickr offers multiple ways of browsing or searching it.…
Survey-based studies suggest that search engines are trusted more than social media or even traditional news, although cases of false information or defamation are known. In this study, we analyze query suggestion features of three search…
Understanding the similar properties of people involved in group search sessions has the potential to significantly improve collaborative search systems; such systems could be enhanced by information retrieval algorithms and user interface…