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Generalist web agents have demonstrated remarkable potential in autonomously completing a wide range of tasks on real websites, significantly boosting human productivity. However, web tasks, such as booking flights, usually involve users'…
With the advent of numerous online content providers, utilities and applications, each with their own specific version of privacy policies and its associated overhead, it is becoming increasingly difficult for concerned users to manage and…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) faces growing challenges from evolving data protection laws and enforcement practices worldwide. Regulations like GDPR and CCPA impose strict compliance requirements on Machine Learning (ML) models, especially…
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…
Since the introduction of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), software developers increasingly have to make privacy-related decisions during system design and…
User tracking is critical in the mobile ecosystem, which relies on device identifiers to build clear user profiles. In earlier ages, Android allowed easy access to non-resettable device identifiers like device serial numbers and IMEI by…
Retargeting ads are increasingly prevalent on the Internet as their effectiveness has been shown to outperform conventional targeted ads. Retargeting ads are not only based on users' interests, but also on their intents, i.e. commercial…
Tracking is a highly privacy-invasive data collection practice that has been ubiquitous in mobile apps for many years due to its role in supporting advertising-based revenue models. In response, Apple introduced two significant changes with…
In the modern Web, service providers often rely heavily on third parties to run their services. For example, they make use of ad networks to finance their services, externally hosted libraries to develop features quickly, and analytics…
The massive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) as a network of interconnected entities [18], brings up new challenges in terms of privacy and security requirements to the traditional software engineering domain [4]. To protect the…
This article provides a quantitative analysis of privacy-compromising mechanisms on 1 million popular websites. Findings indicate that nearly 9 in 10 websites leak user data to parties of which the user is likely unaware; more than 6 in 10…
The Internet of Things (IoT) devices are rapidly increasing in popularity, with more individuals using Internet-connected devices that continuously monitor their activities. This work explores privacy concerns and expectations of end-users…
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…
AI chatbots are becoming a primary interface for seeking information. As their popularity grows, chatbot providers are starting to deploy advertising and analytics. Despite this, tracking on AI chatbots has not been systematically studied.…
Online advertisers and analytics services (or trackers), are constantly tracking users activities as they access web services either through browsers or a mobile apps. Numerous tools such as browser plugins and specialized mobile apps have…
Open access WiFi hotspots are widely deployed in many public places, including restaurants, parks, coffee shops, shopping malls, trains, airports, hotels, and libraries. While these hotspots provide an attractive option to stay connected,…
Device fingerprinting is a widely used technique that allows a third party to identify a particular device. Applications of device fingerprinting include authentication, attacker identification, or software license binding. Device…
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…
Current legal frameworks enforce that Android developers accurately report the data their apps collect. However, large codebases can make this reporting challenging. This paper employs an empirical approach to understand developers'…
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…