Examining Region-Specific Third-Party Web Tracking Services

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Hamed Haddadi (Queen Mary University of London)
• Thursday 15 May 2014, 15:00-16:00
• FW26, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Builiding.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Eiko Yoneki.

Today’s web has a huge, diverse ecosystem of third-party websites collecting information about users and providing them with content such as targeted advertisements. In this paper we study this ecosystem of third-party websites. We sample every continent, targeting the 500 most popular websites in different countries in the world. This allows us to contrast the commonplace, western-dominated views of the web with less studied countries. We find thousands of third-party websites, reflecting the diversity of services and types of application/content they involve, e.g., advertisement, ad trackers, CDNs, news, sport, and pornography. We find those third-party websites offering ad tracking services to be the most prevalent. We then focus on solutions for individuals to regain control of their personal data.

Bio: Hamed is the Lecturer in Digital Media at EECS School in Queen Mary University of London and a Research Scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute. He is interested in Networked Systems & Social Computing. He enjoys designing and building systems that enable better use of our digital footprint, while respecting users’ privacy. He is also broadly interested in sensing applications and Human-Data Interaction. He is currently serving as the Information Services Director for the ACM SIGCOMM Executive Committee.

This talk is part of the Computer Laboratory Systems Research Group Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• CL's SRG seminar
• Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3)
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• Computer Laboratory Systems Research Group Seminar
• Department of Computer Science and Technology talks and seminars
• FW26, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Builiding
• Interested Talks
• School of Technology
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• bld31
• ndk22's list
• ob366-ai4er
• rp587

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.