Related papers: Paying for Privacy: Pay-or-Tracking Walls
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…
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…
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…
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…
Online advertising is progressively moving towards a programmatic model in which ads are matched to actual interests of individuals collected as they browse the web. Letting the huge debate around privacy aside, a very important question in…
Online trackers personalize ads campaigns, exponentially increasing their efficacy compared to traditional channels. The downside of this is that thousands of mostly unknown systems own our profiles and violate our privacy without our…
Cookie paywalls allow visitors of a website to access its content only after they make a choice between paying a fee or accept tracking. European Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) recently issued guidelines and decisions on paywalls…
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…
News recommendation and personalization is not a solved problem. People are growing concerned of their data being collected in excess in the name of personalization and the usage of it for purposes other than the ones they would think…
Media publisher platforms often face an effectiveness-nuisance tradeoff: more annoying ads can be more effective for some advertisers because of their ability to attract attention, but after attracting viewers' attention, their nuisance to…
While advertising has become commonplace in today's online interactions, there is a notable dearth of research investigating the extent to which browser fingerprinting is harnessed for user tracking and targeted advertising. Prior studies…
On today's Web, users trade access to their private data for content and services. Advertising sustains the business model of many websites and applications. Efficient and successful advertising relies on predicting users' actions and…
Privacy was one of the key points mentioned in Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper, and one of the selling points of Bitcoin in its early stages. In hindsight, however, de-anonymising Bitcoin users turned out to be more feasible than expected.…
Mobile devices with rich features can record videos, traffic parameters or air quality readings along user trajectories. Although such data may be valuable, users are seldom rewarded for collecting them. Emerging digital marketplaces allow…
Consider a data publishing setting for a data set with public and private features. The objective of the publisher is to maximize the amount of information about the public features in a revealed data set, while keeping the information…
Trade-offs between privacy and cost are studied for a smart grid consumer, whose electricity consumption is monitored in almost real time by the utility provider (UP) through smart meter (SM) readings. It is assumed that an electrical…
Object and person tracking networks powered by Bluetooth and mobile devices have become increasingly popular for purposes of public safety and individual concerns. This essay examines popular commercial tracking networks and their campaigns…
Since there is, in principle, no reason why third parties should not pay individuals for the use of their data, we introduce a realistic market that would allow these payments to be made while taking into account the privacy attitude of the…
Loyalty programs in the form of punch cards that can be redeemed for benefits have long been a ubiquitous element of the consumer landscape. However, their increasingly popular digital equivalents, while providing more convenience and…
We examine machine learning models in a setup where individuals have the choice to share optional personal information with a decision-making system, as seen in modern insurance pricing models. Some users consent to their data being used…