Authors:
Tim Wambach
and
Katharina Bräunlich
Affiliation:
University Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Keyword(s):
Web Tracking, Tracker, Privacy, Data Leakage, Data Protection, Web Archive, Security, Retrospective Analysis, History of Web Tracking.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Information and Systems Security
;
Information Assurance
;
Information Hiding
;
Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Abstract:
Web tracking has seen a remarkable usage increase during the last years. Unfortunately, an overview of how
web tracking evolved within the last ˜15 years is missing. In this paper we present a retrospective analysis
using archived data to quantify the usage and distribution of web tracking and how it changed throughout the
last decade. We identify a more than five fold increase in external requests between 2005 and 2014. About
half of the analyzed websites have a web tracking based inclusion today (2015). As web tracking is often
associated with a risk of privacy loss, we also outline the security implications of monopolized ubiquitous
tracking.