ePrivo.eu: An online service for automatic web tracking discovery

Given the pervasiveness of web tracking practices on the Internet, many countries are developing and enforcing new privacy regulations to ensure the rights of their citizens. However, discovering websites that do not comply with those regulations is becoming very challenging, given the dynamic natur...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Castell Uroz, Ismael, Douha Prieto, Ismael, Basart Dotras, Meritxell, Mesegué Molina, Pol, Barlet Ros, Pere|||0000-0001-7837-0886
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/386463
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/386463
https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3247863
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Internet -- Security measures
Fingerprinting
Privacy
Web tracking
Web embedding
Internet -- Mesures de seguretat
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Seguretat informàtica
Descripción
Sumario:Given the pervasiveness of web tracking practices on the Internet, many countries are developing and enforcing new privacy regulations to ensure the rights of their citizens. However, discovering websites that do not comply with those regulations is becoming very challenging, given the dynamic nature of the web or the use of obfuscation techniques. This work presents ePrivo, a new online service that can help Internet users, website owners, and regulators inspect how privacy-friendly a given website is. The system explores all the content of the website, including traffic from third parties and dynamically modified content. The ePrivo service combines different state-of-the-art tracking detection and classification methods, including TrackSign, to discover both previously known and zero-day tracking methods. After 6 months of service, ePrivo detected the largest browsing history trackers and more than 40k domains including cookies with a lifespan longer than one year, which is forbidden in some countries.