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Browser fingerprinting is a stateless identification technique based on browser properties. Together, they form an identifier that can be collected without users' notice and has been studied to be unique and stable. As this technique relies…
Several ICT studies give anecdotal evidences showing privacy to be an area of concern that can influence adoption of technology in the developing world. However, in-depth understanding of end users' privacy attitudes and awareness is…
The third version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is currently in its final standardization phase by the IETF. Besides better security and increased flexibility, it promises benefits in terms of performance. HTTP/3 adopts a more…
Users care greatly about preserving the privacy of their personal data gathered during their use of information systems. This extends to both the data they actively provide in exchange for services as well as the metadata passively…
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…
Popular social media platforms TikTok, Facebook and Instagram allow third-parties to run targeted advertising campaigns on sensitive attributes in-platform. These ads are interactive by default, meaning users can comment or ``react'' (e.g.,…
The intrusiveness and the increasing invasiveness of online advertising have, in the last few years, raised serious concerns regarding user privacy and Web usability. As a reaction to these concerns, we have witnessed the emergence of a…
The rise of cookie paywalls ('pay-or-ok' models) has prompted growing debates around the right to privacy and data protection, monetisation, and the legitimacy of user consent. Despite their increasing use across sectors, limited research…
Quick UDP Internet Connection (QUIC) is an emerging end-to-end encrypted, transport-layer protocol, which has been increasingly adopted by popular web services to improve communication security and quality of experience (QoE) towards…
Several studies have been conducted on understanding third-party user tracking on the web. However, web trackers can only track users on sites where they are embedded by the publisher, thus obtaining a fragmented view of a user's online…
Zoom serves millions of users daily and allows third-party developers to integrate their apps with the Zoom client and reach those users. So far, these apps' privacy and security aspects, which can access rich audio-visual data (among…
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…
Tracking pixels are used to optimize online ad campaigns through personalization, re-targeting, and conversion tracking. Past research has primarily focused on detecting the prevalence of tracking pixels on the web, with limited attention…
The presence of third-party tracking on websites has become customary. However, our understanding of the third-party ecosystem is still very rudimentary. We examine third-party trackers from a geographical perspective, observing the…
QUIC, as the foundation for HTTP/3, is becoming an Internet reality. A plethora of studies already show that QUIC excels beyond TCP+TLS+HTTP/2. Yet, these studies compare a highly optimized QUIC Web stack against an unoptimized TCP-based…
Online Social Networking Sites attracted a massive number of users over the past decade but also raised privacy concerns with the amount of personal information disclosed. Studies have shown that 25% of the users are not aware of privacy…
Many tracking companies collect user data and sell it to data markets and advertisers. While they claim to protect user privacy by anonymizing the data, our research reveals that significant privacy risks persist even with anonymized data.…
Browser fingerprinting is a pervasive online tracking technique used increasingly often for profiling and targeted advertising. Prior research on the prevalence of fingerprinting heavily relied on automated web crawls, which inherently…
On the internet, we encounter take-it-or-leave-it choices regarding our privacy on a daily basis. In Europe, online tracking for targeted advertising generally requires the internet users' consent to be lawful. Some websites use a tracking…
The popularity of mobile device has made people's lives more convenient, but threatened people's privacy at the same time. As end users are becoming more and more concerned on the protection of their private information, it is even harder…