creators_name: Krishnamurthy, Balachander creators_name: Wills, Craig type: conference_item datestamp: 2009-04-06 19:10:03 lastmod: 2009-04-21 02:42:20 metadata_visibility: show title: Privacy Diffusion on the Web: A Longitudinal Perspective ispublished: pub full_text_status: public pres_type: paper abstract: For the last few years we have studied the diffusion of private information about users as they visit various Web sites triggering data gathering aggregation by third parties. This paper reports on our longitudinal study consisting of multiple snapshots of our examination of such diffusion over four years. We examine the various technical ways by which third-party aggregators acquire data and the depth of userrelated information acquired. We study techniques for protecting against this privacy diffusion as well as limitations of such techniques. We introduce the concept of secondary privacy damage. Our results show increasing aggregation of user-related data by a steadily decreasing number of entities. A handful of companies are able to track users’ movement across almost all of the popular Web sites. Virtually all the protection techniques have significant limitations highlighting the seriousness of the problem and the need for alternate solutions. date: 2009-04 pagerange: 541-541 event_title: 18th International World Wide Web Conference event_location: Madrid, Spain event_dates: April 20th-24th, 2009 event_type: conference refereed: TRUE citation: Krishnamurthy, Balachander and Wills, Craig (2009) Privacy Diffusion on the Web: A Longitudinal Perspective. In: 18th International World Wide Web Conference, April 20th-24th, 2009, Madrid, Spain. document_url: http://www2009.eprints.org/55/1/p541.pdf document_url: http://www2009.eprints.org/55/2/www09.pdf