Related papers: Beyond the Front Page: Measuring Third Party Dynam…
Websites employ third-party ads and tracking services leveraging cookies and JavaScript code, to deliver ads and track users' behavior, causing privacy concerns. To limit online tracking and block advertisements, several ad-blocking (black)…
The loading of resources from third-parties has evoked new security and privacy concerns about the current world wide web. Building on the concepts of forced and implicit trust, this paper examines cross-domain transmission control protocol…
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…
Web-based chatbots provide website owners with the benefits of increased sales, immediate response to their customers, and insight into customer behaviour. While Web-based chatbots are getting popular, they have not received much scrutiny…
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…
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…
Privacy has been a major concern for everybody over the internet. Governments across the globe have given their views on how the internet space can be managed effectively so that there is some control on the flow of confidential information…
The topological structures of the Internet and the Web have received considerable attention. However, there has been little research on the topological properties of individual web sites. In this paper, we consider whether web sites (as…
Privacy regulations have led to many websites showing cookie banners to their users. Usually, cookie banners present the user with the option to "accept" or "reject" cookies. Recently, a new form of paywall-like cookie banner has taken hold…
Health information websites offer instantaneous access to information, but have important privacy implications as they can associate a visitor with specific medical conditions. We interviewed 35 residents of Canada to better understand…
This paper explores the intersection of privacy, cybersecurity, and environmental impacts, specifically energy consumption and carbon emissions, in cloud-based office solutions. We hypothesise that solutions that emphasise privacy and…
This paper introduces \textit{measurement trees}, a novel class of metrics designed to combine various constructs into an interpretable multi-level representation of a measurand. Unlike conventional metrics that yield single values,…
Web 3.0, as the third generation of the World Wide Web, aims to solve contemporary problems of trust, centralization, and data ownership. Driven by the latest advances in cutting-edge technologies, Web 3.0 is moving towards a more open,…
Web search is an integral part of our daily lives. Recently, there has been a trend of personalization in Web search, where different users receive different results for the same search query. The increasing level of personalization is…
As third-party cookies are being phased out or restricted by major browsers, first-party cookies are increasingly repurposed for tracking. Prior work has shown that third-party scripts embedded in the main frame can access and exfiltrate…
The collapse of social contexts has been amplified by digital infrastructures but surprisingly received insufficient attention from Web privacy scholars. Users are persistently identified within and across distinct Web contexts, in varying…
Browser extensions are third party programs, tightly integrated to browsers, where they execute with elevated privileges in order to provide users with additional functionalities. Unlike web applications, extensions are not subject to the…
Revelations of large scale electronic surveillance and data mining by governments and corporations have fueled increased adoption of HTTPS. We present a traffic analysis attack against over 6000 webpages spanning the HTTPS deployments of 10…
This paper offers a new privacy approach for the growing ecosystem of services -- ranging from open banking to healthcare -- dependent on sensitive personal data sharing between individuals and third parties. While these services offer…
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…