Description
of
Tutorial

Title :
Web Tracking Technologies and Protection Mechanisms

Organizer :

Abstract :

Billions of users browse the Web on a daily basis, leaving their digital traces on millions of websites. Every such visit, every mouse move or button click may trigger a wide variety of hidden data exchanges across multiple tracking companies. As a result, these companies collect a vast amount of user’s data, preferences and habits, that are extremely useful for online advertisers and profitable for data brokers, however very worrisome for the privacy of the users.

In this half a day tutorial we will cover the vide variety of Web tracking technologies, ranging from simple cookies to advanced cross-device fingerprinting. We will describe the main mechanisms behind web tracking and what users can do to protect themselves. Moreover, we will discuss solutions Web developers can use to automatically eliminate tracking from the third-party content they include in their applications.

This tutorial will be of interest to a general audience of computer scientists, and we do not require any specific prerequisite knowledge for attendees.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own device (ideally laptop), as the tutorial will include some simple hands-on experiments.