20 research outputs found
Measuring third party tracker power across web and mobile
Third-party networks collect vast amounts of data about users via web sites
and mobile applications. Consolidations among tracker companies can
significantly increase their individual tracking capabilities, prompting
scrutiny by competition regulators. Traditional measures of market share, based
on revenue or sales, fail to represent the tracking capability of a tracker,
especially if it spans both web and mobile. This paper proposes a new approach
to measure the concentration of tracking capability, based on the reach of a
tracker on popular websites and apps. Our results reveal that tracker
prominence and parent-subsidiary relationships have significant impact on
accurately measuring concentration
Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem
Third party tracking allows companies to identify users and track their
behaviour across multiple digital services. This paper presents an empirical
study of the prevalence of third-party trackers on 959,000 apps from the US and
UK Google Play stores. We find that most apps contain third party tracking, and
the distribution of trackers is long-tailed with several highly dominant
trackers accounting for a large portion of the coverage. The extent of tracking
also differs between categories of apps; in particular, news apps and apps
targeted at children appear to be amongst the worst in terms of the number of
third party trackers associated with them. Third party tracking is also
revealed to be a highly trans-national phenomenon, with many trackers operating
in jurisdictions outside the EU. Based on these findings, we draw out some
significant legal compliance challenges facing the tracking industry.Comment: Corrected missing company info (Linkedin owned by Microsoft). Figures
for Microsoft and Linkedin re-calculated and added to Table
The Internet Companiesâ Dance: A Longitudinal Strategic Grouping Analysis
The Internet is embedded in all aspects of our life. Internet companies have proliferated, and their influence on shaping todayâs economies, cultures, and societies has also grown. However, it is not clear how the Internet-based industry, its players, and their strategic orientations evolved. Through a longitudinal clustering analysis, this study explores the strategic orientations adopted by 103 public Internet-based businesses over the past 20 years at three different points in time (2000, 2010, and 2020). The results show that firmsâ strategies changed from 2000 to 2010. From 2010 to 2020, we observed that some companies altered their strategy, while others kept a consistent strategic approach. The outcomes from these decisions are discussed to shed light on how companies (un)successfully navigated the digital transformation. These findings are also interpreted to form a basis for theory building
Under the Spotlight: Web Tracking in Indian Partisan News Websites
India is experiencing intense political partisanship and sectarian divisions.
The paper performs, to the best of our knowledge, the first comprehensive
analysis on the Indian online news media with respect to tracking and
partisanship. We build a dataset of 103 online, mostly mainstream news
websites. With the help of two experts, alongside data from the Media Ownership
Monitor of the Reporters without Borders, we label these websites according to
their partisanship (Left, Right, or Centre). We study and compare user tracking
on these sites with different metrics: numbers of cookies, cookie
synchronizations, device fingerprinting, and invisible pixel-based tracking. We
find that Left and Centre websites serve more cookies than Right-leaning
websites. However, through cookie synchronization, more user IDs are
synchronized in Left websites than Right or Centre. Canvas fingerprinting is
used similarly by Left and Right, and less by Centre. Invisible pixel-based
tracking is 50% more intense in Centre-leaning websites than Right, and 25%
more than Left. Desktop versions of news websites deliver more cookies than
their mobile counterparts. A handful of third-parties are tracking users in
most websites in this study. This paper, by demonstrating intense web tracking,
has implications for research on overall privacy of users visiting partisan
news websites in India
Antitrust and restrictions on privacy in the digital economy
We present a model of a market failure based on a requirement provision by digital platforms in the acquisition of personal information from users of other products/services. We establish the economic harm from the market failure and the requirement using traditional antitrust methodology. Eliminating the requirement and the market failure by creating a functioning market for the sale of personal information would create a functioning market for personal information that would benefit users. Even though market harm is established under the assumption that consumers are perfectly informed about the value of their privacy, we show that when users are not well informed, there can be additional harms to this market failure
Navigating the Data Avalanche: Towards Supporting Developers in Developing Privacy-Friendly Childrenâs Apps
This paper critically examines the intersection of privacy concerns in children's apps and the support required by developers to effectively address these concerns. Third-party libraries and software development kits (SDKs) are widely used in mobile app development, however, these libraries are commonly known for posing significant data privacy risks to users. Recent research has shown that app developers for children are particularly struggling with the lack of support in navigating the complex market of third-party SDKs. The support needed for developers to build privacy-friendly apps is largely understudied. Motivated by the needs of developers and an empirical analysis of 137 'expert-approved' children's apps, we designed DataAvalanche.io, a web-based tool to support app developers in navigating the privacy and legal implications associated with common third-party SDKs on the market. Through semi-structured interviews with 12 app developers for children, we demonstrate that app developers largely perceive the transparency supported by our tool positively. However, they raised several barriers, including the challenges of adopting privacy-friendly alternatives and the struggle to safeguard their own legal interests when facing the imbalance of power in the app market. We contribute to our understanding of the open challenges and barriers faced by app developers in creating privacy-friendly apps for children and provide critical future design and policy directions
Navigating the data avalanche: towards supporting developers in developing privacy-friendly children's apps
This paper critically examines the intersection of privacy concerns in childrenâs apps and the support required by developers
to effectively address these concerns. Third-party libraries and software development kits (SDKs) are widely used in mobile
app development, however, these libraries are commonly known for posing significant data privacy risks to users. Recent
research has shown that app developers for children are particularly struggling with the lack of support in navigating the
complex market of third-party SDKs. The support needed for developers to build privacy-friendly apps is largely understudied.
Motivated by the needs of developers and an empirical analysis of 137 âexpert-approvedâ childrenâs apps, we designed
DataAvalanche.io, a web-based tool to support app developers in navigating the privacy and legal implications associated
with common third-party SDKs on the market. Through semi-structured interviews with 12 app developers for children, we
demonstrate that app developers largely perceive the transparency supported by our tool positively. However, they raised
several barriers, including the challenges of adopting privacy-friendly alternatives and the struggle to safeguard their own
legal interests when facing the imbalance of power in the app market. We contribute to our understanding of the open
challenges and barriers faced by app developers in creating privacy-friendly apps for children and provide critical future
design and policy directions