|
Identifier |
000414784 |
Title |
A longitudinal study of web trackers and their impact to the popularity of websites |
Alternative Title |
Μια διαχρονική μελέτη των διαδικτυακών ιχνηλατών και τον αντίκτυπό τους στη δημοτικότητα των ιστότοπων |
Author
|
Δημητριάδης, Ευάγγελος Χ.
|
Author
|
Μαρκάτος, Ευάγγελος
|
Reviewer
|
Ιωαννίδης, Σωτήρης
Τσακαλίδης, Παναγιώτης
|
Abstract |
Third party content in the form of web trackers has become a cornerstone of the internet, over
the past years. The privacy risks that arise from the excessive use of tracking mechanisms has
drawn the attention of the community. In this paper we provide a large-scale measurement over
the past 7 years, observing the incremental rise of trackers on Alexa’s top 50K websites. We
examine the growth and popularity of third party content that aims to identify users on the web.
Furthermore, we perform deeper analysis on websites that contain an overly large number of
trackers. Our dataset of the past seven years has been collected from entries of archive.org. Using
those datapoints, we mainly focus on the connection between the number of trackers and the
website’s Alexa Rank.
Our results indicate a clear correlation between the number of trackers and a website’s Alexa
Rank. We verify the increased use of third party tracking on the web, taking advantage of well-known blacklists to filter out generic third party content. Moreover, we observe the rise of the
dominant trackers alongside the new ones that try to emerge yearly, in the fast moving internet
economy. We believe that this study clears the field which regards the quantification of this
phenomenon, provides results and measurements of the current state of online privacy, as well
as insights for its future.
|
Language |
English |
Subject |
Alexa Rank |
|
Web trackers |
|
Διαδίκτυο |
|
Ιχνηλάτες |
Issue date |
2018-03-23 |
Collection
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School/Department--School of Sciences and Engineering--Department of Computer Science--Post-graduate theses
|
|
Type of Work--Post-graduate theses
|
Views |
469 |