Evaluating private modes in desktop and mobile browsers and their resistance to fingerprinting

Wu, Yuanyi; Meng, Dongyu; Chen, Hao

doi:10.1109/cns.2017.8228636

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The results show that 2,292 (98.6%) of the 2,324 browser versions were vulnerable to at least one ABBs. Wu et al performed a comparative analysis of the implementation of private browsing modes on desktop and mobile versions of browsers [76]. The study found inconsistencies between different browsers and the desktop and mobile versions of the same browser.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Inconsistencies in the Permissions Mechanism of Web Browsers

Nomoto,

Watanabe,

Shioji

et al. 2023

Journal of Information Processing

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Modern Web services provide advanced features by utilizing hardware resources on the user's device. Web browsers implement a user consent-based permission model to protect user privacy. In this study, we developed Permium, a web browser analysis framework that automatically analyzes the behavior of permission mechanisms implemented by various browsers. We systematically studied the behavior of permission mechanisms for 22 major browser implementations running on five different operating systems. We found fragmented implementations. Implementations between browsers running on different operating systems are not always identical. We determined that implementation inconsistencies could lead to privacy risks. We identified gaps between browser permission implementations and user perceptions from the user study corresponding to the analyses using Permium. Based on the implementation inconsistencies, we developed two proof-of-concept attacks and evaluated their feasibility. The first attack uses permission information to secretly track the user. The second attack aims to create a situation in which the user cannot correctly determine the origin of the permission request and the user mistakenly grants permission. Finally, we clarify the technical issues that must be standardized in privacy mechanisms and provide recommendations to OS/browser vendors to mitigate the threats identified in this study.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Inconsistencies in the Permissions Mechanism of Web Browsers

Nomoto,

Watanabe,

Shioji

et al. 2023

Journal of Information Processing

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“…Another privacy protection tool analyzed by Wu et al in [12] was Private browsing mode, which is available on both desktop and mobile. Many contradictions were found between various browsers and between different versions of the same browser on different platforms.…”

Section: Mikhailovich Et Al Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Web Tracking Domain and Possible Privacy Defending Tools: A燣iterature燫eview

Bubukayr¹,

Frikha²

2022

Journal of Cyber Security

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Personal data are strongly linked to web browsing history. By visiting a certain website, a user can share her favorite items, location, employment status, financial information, preferences, gender, medical status, news, etc. Therefore, web tracking is considered as one of the most significant internet privacy threats that can have a serious impact on end-users. Usually, it is used by most websites to track visitors through the internet in order to enhance their services and improve search customization. Moreover, selling users' data to the advertising companies without their permission. Although there are more research efforts focused on third-party tracking to protect user privacy, there are still no comprehensive approaches to develop an efficient and accessible privacy protection method, even if more attention is paid to the topic. The main goal of this paper is to conduct a literature review on the web-tracking domain and possible privacy defending methods by presenting an overview of privacy issues, determining the possible tracking mechanisms that might be exploited, discussing the available privacy defense tools that could be utilized for improvement, and presenting the strength and weaknesses of each method.

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“…The study found that the majority of browsers that have been analyzed keep traces of the user browsing in the user file system [32]. More recently, a study conducted by Wu et al (2018) to assess the level of protection of a private browsing mode presented a similar result [33]. The study found that not all web browsers analyzed delete all created data on the user-side database after the in private mode is closed.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Investigation of User Privacy and Data Protection on User-Side Storage

Al-Rousan

2019

Int. J. Onl. Eng.

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Along with the introduction of HTML5, a new user storage technologies; particularly, Web SQL Database, Web Storage, and Indexed Database API have emerged. The common goal of these storage technologies is to overcome the limitations of legacy of user-side storage mechanisms. All these technologies have many privacy and security concerns, and the main threat is user tracking. In this context, this study investigates the usage of these technologies and to find out which one of these technologies is primarily used by user trackers, and to calculate their frequency in context of 3rd-party tracking code. The result exposes that the adoption of Web Storage most commonly used amongst the three storage technologies. Motivated by the investigation results, this study examines the degree of protection which the popular web browsers supply to prevent privacy violations. The result reveals that the protection mechanisms that are provided by web browsers are almost the same, and in many occasions privacy violations do exist

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Evaluating private modes in desktop and mobile browsers and their resistance to fingerprinting

Cited by 8 publications

References 7 publications

Understanding the Inconsistencies in the Permissions Mechanism of Web Browsers

Understanding the Inconsistencies in the Permissions Mechanism of Web Browsers

Web Tracking Domain and Possible Privacy Defending Tools: A燣iterature燫eview

An Investigation of User Privacy and Data Protection on User-Side Storage

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