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The World Wide Web's connectivity is greatly attributed to the HTTP protocol, with HTTP messages offering informative header fields that appeal to disciplines like web security and privacy, especially concerning web tracking. Despite…
With smartphone technologies enhanced way of interacting with the world around us, it has also been paving the way for easier access to our private and personal information. This has been amplified by the existence of numerous embedded…
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…
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…
With the increasing concerns around privacy and the enforcement of data privacy laws, many websites now provide users with privacy controls. However, locating these controls can be challenging, as they are frequently hidden within multiple…
Web tracking has been extensively studied over the last decade. To detect tracking, previous studies and user tools rely on filter lists. However, it has been shown that filter lists miss trackers. In this paper, we propose an alternative…
IoT Trigger-Action Platforms (TAPs) typically offer coarse-grained permission controls. Even when fine-grained controls are available, users are likely overwhelmed by the complexity of setting privacy preferences. This paper contributes to…
The privacy of an individual is bounded by the ability of a third party to reveal their identity. Certain data items such as a passport ID or a mobile phone number may be used to uniquely identify a person. These are referred to as Personal…
Online privacy has become increasingly important in recent years. While third-party cookies have been widely used for years, they have also been criticized for their potential impact on user privacy. They can be used by advertisers to track…
This work presents a systematic study of navigational tracking, the latest development in the cat-and-mouse game between browsers and online trackers. Navigational tracking allows trackers to 'aggregate users' activities and behaviors…
Web tracking harms user privacy. As a result, the use of tracker detection and blocking tools is a common practice among Internet users. However, no such tool can be perfect, and thus there is a trade-off between avoiding breakage (caused…
Data collection purposes and their descriptions are presented on almost all privacy notices under the GDPR, yet there is a lack of research focusing on how effective they are at informing users about data practices. We fill this gap by…
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…
We measure how effective Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are at protecting users from website fingerprinting. Our measurements use both experimental and observational methods. Experimental methods allow control, precision, and use on…
We present the first measurement of the user-effect and privacy impact of "Related Website Sets," a recent proposal to reduce browser privacy protections between two sites if those sites are related to each other. An assumption (both…
Digital contact tracing can limit the spread of infectious diseases. Nevertheless, there remain barriers to attaining sufficient adoption. In this study, we investigate how willingness to participate in contact tracing is affected by two…
Generative AI (GenAI) browser assistants integrate powerful capabilities of GenAI in web browsers to provide rich experiences such as question answering, content summarization, and agentic navigation. These assistants, available today as…
Data dashboards are designed to help users manage data collected about them. However, prior work showed that exposure to some dashboards, notably Google's My Activity dashboard, results in significant decreases in perceived concern and…
Protecting personal information privacy has become a controversial issue among online social network providers and users. Most social network providers have developed several techniques to decrease threats and risks to the users privacy.…
Mobile apps are used in a variety of health settings, from apps that help providers, to apps designed for patients, to health and fitness apps designed for the general public. These apps ask the user for, and then collect and leak a wealth…