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We show how third-party web trackers can deanonymize users of cryptocurrencies. We present two distinct but complementary attacks. On most shopping websites, third party trackers receive information about user purchases for purposes of…
Web tracking by ad networks, social networks, and other third parties is privacy-invasive. To protect users' privacy an increasing number of countries are adopting new privacy laws. However, a major reason why their application on the web…
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…
The Internet facilitates sex trafficking through adult service websites (ASWs) that host online advertisements for sexual services (sex ads). Since the closure of the popular site Backpage.com, the ecosystem of ASWs has expanded to include…
Recommendation systems form the center piece of a rapidly growing trillion dollar online advertisement industry. Even with numerous optimizations and approximations, collaborative filtering (CF) based approaches require real-time…
In the last decade, the advertisement market spread significantly in the web and mobile app system. Its effectiveness is also due thanks to the possibility to target the advertisement on the specific interests of the actual user, other than…
With a vast number of items, web-pages, and news to choose from, online services and the customers both benefit tremendously from personalized recommender systems. Such systems however provide great opportunities for targeted…
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…
We describe our work in the collection and analysis of massive data describing the connections between participants to online social networks. Alternative approaches to social network data collection are defined and evaluated in practice,…
Advertisements generate huge chunks of revenues for websites and online businesses. Ad-blocker and tracker blocking programs have gained momentum in the last few years with massive debates raging on privacy concerns and improving user…
Modern applications significantly enhance user experience by adapting to each user's individual condition and/or preferences. While this adaptation can greatly improve utility or be essential for the application to work (e.g., for…
Third-party tracking is common on almost all commercially operated websites. Prior work has studied in detail the extent of third-party tracking on the web, detection of third-party trackers, and defending against third-party tracking.…
Web-based human trafficking activity has increased in recent years but it remains sparsely dispersed among escort advertisements and difficult to identify due to its often-latent nature. The use of intelligent systems to detect trafficking…
To what extent are users surveilled on the web, by what technologies, and by whom? We answer these questions by combining passively observed, anonymized browsing data of a large, representative sample of Americans with domain-level data on…
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…
Modern applications significantly enhance user experience by adapting to each user's individual condition and/or preferences. While this adaptation can greatly improve a user's experience or be essential for the application to work, the…
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…
Privacy has deteriorated in the world wide web ever since the 1990s. The tracking of browsing habits by different third-parties has been at the center of this deterioration. Web cookies and so-called web beacons have been the classical ways…
Recent developments in online tracking make it harder for individuals to detect and block trackers. Some sites have deployed indirect tracking methods, which attempt to uniquely identify a device by asking the browser to perform a…
Censorship of the Internet is widespread around the world. As access to the web becomes increasingly ubiquitous, filtering of this resource becomes more pervasive. Transparency about specific content that citizens are denied access to is…