Related papers: Characterising Third Party Cookie Usage in the EU …
Third-party web tracking is a common, and broadly used technique on the Web. Almost every step of users' is tracked, analyzed, and later used in different use cases (e.g., online advertisement). Different defense mechanisms have emerged to…
With the arrival of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), several companies are making significant changes to their systems to achieve compliance. The changes range from modifying privacy policies to redesigning…
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…
Web cookies are ubiquitously used to track and profile the behavior of users. Although there is a solid empirical foundation for understanding the use of cookies in the global world wide web, thus far, limited attention has been devoted for…
While companies increasingly rely on data, especially when it comes to targeted advertising, adapting content to users, selling data and training machine learning models, the collection of data raises privacy concerns. One way of collecting…
This study explores the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), introduced on May 25th, 2018, on online trackers, vital elements in the online advertising ecosystem. Using a difference-in-differences approach with a…
The privacy implications of third-party tracking is a well-studied problem. Recent research has shown that besides data aggregators and behavioral advertisers, online social networks also act as trackers via social widgets. Existing cookie…
This paper introduces the strategic approach to regulating personal data and the normative foundations of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation ('GDPR'). We explain the genesis of the GDPR, which is best understood as an…
After one year since the entry into force of the GDPR, all web sites and data controllers have updated their procedures to store users' data. The GDPR does not only cover how and what data should be saved by the service providers, but it…
A website browser cookie is a small file created by a web server upon visitation, which is placed in the user's browser directory to enhance the user's experience. However, first and third-party cookies have become a significant threat to…
Online tracking remains problematic, with compliance and ethical issues persisting despite regulatory efforts. Consent interfaces, the visible manifestation of this industry, have seen significant attention over the years. We present robust…
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is considered as the benchmark in the European Union (EU) for privacy and data protection standards. Since before its entry into force in 2018, substantial research has been conducted in the…
In response to the ePrivacy Directive and the consent requirements introduced by the GDPR, websites began deploying consent banners to obtain user permission for data collection and processing. However, due to shared third-party services…
Websites are constantly adapting the methods used, and intensity with which they track online visitors. However, the wide-range enforcement of GDPR since one year ago (May 2018) forced websites serving EU-based online visitors to eliminate…
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…
As third-party cookie blocking is becoming the norm in browsers, advertisers and trackers have started to use first-party cookies for tracking. We conduct a differential measurement study on 10K websites with third-party cookies allowed and…
The GDPR requires websites to facilitate the right to revoke consent from Web users. While numerous studies measured compliance of consent with the various consent requirements, no prior work has studied consent revocation on the Web.…
Third party advertising and tracking (A&T) are pervasive across the web, yet user exposure varies significantly with browser choice, browsing location, and hosting jurisdiction. We systematically study how these three factors shape tracking…
This article provides a quantitative analysis of privacy-compromising mechanisms on 1 million popular websites. Findings indicate that nearly 9 in 10 websites leak user data to parties of which the user is likely unaware; more than 6 in 10…
A dominant regulatory model for web privacy is "notice and choice". In this model, users are notified of data collection and provided with options to control it. To examine the efficacy of this approach, this study presents the first…