Related papers: Navigating Cookie Consent Violations Across the Gl…
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…
Web browsers, particularly Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, have grown in popularity over the past decade, with browser extensions becoming an integral part of their ecosystem. These extensions can customize and enhance the…
Browser fingerprinting often provides an attractive alternative to third-party cookies for tracking users across the web. In fact, the increasing restrictions on third-party cookies placed by common web browsers and recent regulations like…
This paper reports an interview study about how consent to sexual activity is computer-mediated. The study's context of online dating is chosen due to the prevalence of sexual violence, or nonconsensual sexual activity, that is associated…
Recent works showed that websites can detect browser extensions that users install and websites they are logged into. This poses significant privacy risks, since extensions and Web logins that reflect user's behavior, can be used to…
Accurately analyzing and modeling online browsing behavior play a key role in understanding users and technology interactions. In this work, we design and conduct a user study to collect browsing data from 31 participants continuously for…
In this paper we argue that policies are an increasing concern for organizations that are operating a web site. Examples of policies that are relevant in the domain of the web address issues such as privacy of personal data, accessibility…
While there is increasing global attention to data privacy, most of their current theoretical understanding is based on research conducted in a few countries. Prior work argues that people's cultural backgrounds might shape their privacy…
Obtaining meaningful and informed consent from users is essential for ensuring autonomy and control over one's data. Notice and consent, the standard for collecting consent, has been criticized. While other individualized solutions have…
Consent dialogues are a source of annoyance, malicious intent, dark patterns, illegal practices and a plethora of other issues. This work presents known problems based on GDPR requirements grouped into two categories: (i) UI/UX for…
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 web browsers have effectively become the new operating system for business applications, yet their security posture is often under-scrutinized. This paper presents a novel, comprehensive Browser Security Posture Analysis…
HTTP client hints are a set of standardized HTTP request headers designed to modernize and potentially replace the traditional user agent string. While the user agent string exposes a wide range of information about the client's browser and…
Browsers and their users can be tracked even in the absence of a persistent IP address or cookie. Unique and hence identifying pieces of information, making up what is known as a fingerprint, can be collected from browsers by a visited…
Misconceptions about digital security and privacy topics in the general public frequently lead to insecure behavior. However, little is known about the prevalence and extent of such misconceptions in a global context. In this work, we…
The content moderation systems used by social media sites are a topic of widespread interest and research, but less is known about the use of similar systems by web search engines. For example, Google Search attempts to help its users…
Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts humans use in dealing with information and the environment, and which result in biased actions and behaviors (or, actions), unbeknownst to themselves. Biases take many forms, with cognitive biases…
Cookie banners and privacy settings attempt to give users a sense of control over how their personal data is collected and used, but background tracking of personal information often continues unnoticed. To explore how such invisible data…
General-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) systems are built on massive swathes of public web data, assembled into corpora such as C4, RefinedWeb, and Dolma. To our knowledge, we conduct the first, large-scale, longitudinal audit of the…
There is a growing concern about consolidation trends in Internet services, with, for instance, a large fraction of popular websites depending on a handful of third-party service providers. In this paper, we report on a large-scale study of…