Web privacy measurement — observing websites and services to detect, characterize, and quantify privacy impacting behaviors — has repeatedly forced companies to improve their privacy practices due to public pressure, press coverage, and regulatory action. In previous blog posts I’ve analyzed why our 2014 collaboration with KU Leuven researchers studying canvas fingerprinting was successful, and […]
The Web Privacy Problem is a Transparency Problem: Introducing the OpenWPM measurement tool
In a previous blog post I explored the success of our study, The Web Never Forgets, in having a positive impact on web privacy. To ensure a lasting impact, we’ve been doing monthly, automated 1-million-site measurement of tracking and privacy. Soon we’ll be releasing these datasets and our findings. But in this post I’d like […]
Do privacy studies help? A Retrospective look at Canvas Fingerprinting
It seems like every month we hear of some new online privacy violation in the news, on topics such as fingerprinting or web tracking. Many of these news stories highlight academic research. What we don’t see is whether these studies and the subsequent news stories have any impact on privacy. Our 2014 canvas fingerprinting measurement […]