Related papers: Is Private Browsing in Modern Web Browsers Really …
Users share a vast amount of data while using web and mobile applications. Most service providers such as email and social media providers provide users with privacy controls, which aim to give users the means to control what, how, when,…
Nowadays, the users' browsing activity on the Internet is not completely private due to many entities that collect and use such data, either for legitimate or illegal goals. The implications are serious, from a person who exposes…
Most popular web browsers include "reader modes" that improve the user experience by removing un-useful page elements. Reader modes reformat the page to hide elements that are not related to the page's main content. Such page elements…
This articles surveys the existing literature on the methods currently used by web services to track the user online as well as their purposes, implications, and possible user's defenses. A significant majority of reviewed articles and web…
Online tracking is a widespread practice on the web with questionable ethics, security, and privacy concerns. While web tracking can offer personalized and curated content to Internet users, it operates as a sophisticated surveillance…
The number of smartphones, tablets, sensors, and connected wearable devices are rapidly increasing. Today, in many parts of the globe, the penetration of mobile computers has overtaken the number of traditional personal computers. This…
Internet users today are constantly giving away their personal information and privacy through social media, tracking cookies, 'free' email, and single sign-on authentication in order to access convenient online services. Unfortunately, the…
Current best practices heavily control user permissions on network systems. This effectively mitigates many insider threats regarding the collection and exfiltration of data. Many methods of covert communication involve crafting custom…
Digital services like ride sharing rely heavily on personal data as individuals have to disclose personal information in order to gain access to the market and exchange their information with other participants; yet, the service provider…
A large amount of data on the WWW remains inaccessible to crawlers of Web search engines because it can only be exposed on demand as users fill out and submit forms. The Hidden web refers to the collection of Web data which can be accessed…
The web browser is one of the major channels to access the Internet on mobile devices. Based on the smartphone usage logs from millions of real-world Android users, it is interesting to find that about 38% users have more than one browser…
Releasing Web query logs which contain valuable information for research or marketing, can breach the privacy of search engine users. Therefore rendering query logs to limit linking a query to an individual while preserving the data…
Since the beginning of the digital area, privacy and anonymity have been impacted drastically (both, positively and negatively), by the different technologies developed for communications purposes. The broad possibilities that the Internet…
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.…
Modern websites frequently use and embed third-party services to facilitate web development, connect to social media, or for monetization. This often introduces privacy issues as the inclusion of third-party services on a website can allow…
We present Tracking Protection in the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Tracking Protection is a new privacy technology to mitigate invasive tracking of users' online activity by blocking requests to tracking domains. We evaluate our approach…
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…
While it is often claimed that users are empowered via online technologies, there is also a general feeling of privacy dis-empowerment. We investigate the perception of privacy and sharing empowerment online, as well as the use of privacy…
The privacy of personal information is an important issue affecting the confidence of internet users. The widespread adoption of online social networks and access to these platforms using mobile devices has encouraged developers to make the…
During the past few years, mostly as a result of the GDPR and the CCPA, websites have started to present users with cookie consent banners. These banners are web forms where the users can state their preference and declare which cookies…