How Can and Would People Protect From Online Tracking?

Mehrnezhad, Maryam; Coopamootoo, Kovila; Toreini, Ehsan

Abstract

Online tracking is complex and users find itchallenging to protect themselves from it. While the aca-demic community has extensively studied systems andusers for tracking practices, the link between the dataprotection regulations, websites’ practices of presentingprivacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), and how userslearn about PETs and practice them is not clear. Thispaper takes a multidimensional approach to find such alink. We conduct a study to evaluate the 100 top EUwebsites, where we find that information about PETsis provided far beyond the cookie notice. We also findthat opting-out from privacy settings is not as easy asopting-in and becomes even more difficult (if not impos-sible) when the user decides to opt-out of previously ac-cepted privacy settings. In addition, we conduct an on-line survey with 614 participants across three countries(UK, France, Germany) to gain a broad understand-ing of users’ tracking protection practices. We find thatusers mostly learn about PETs for tracking protectionvia their own research or with the help of family andfriends. We find a disparity between what websites offeras tracking protection and the ways individuals reportto do so. Observing such a disparity sheds light on whycurrent policies and practices are ineffective in support-ing the use of PETs by users.

Citation

Mehrnezhad, M., Coopamootoo, K., & Toreini, E. (2022). How Can and Would People Protect From Online Tracking?. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 1, 105-125. https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2022-0006

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 16, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Nov 20, 2021
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Dec 1, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 3, 2021
• Journal: Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies
• Electronic ISSN: 2299-0984
• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Pages: 105-125
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2022-0006
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1220595