Home // ICIMP 2019, The Fourteenth International Conference on Internet Monitoring and Protection // View article

A Large-Scale Analysis of Browser Fingerprinting via Chrome Instrumentation

Authors:
Mohammadreza Ashouri

Keywords: browser fingerprinting ; privacy ; security ; web API; encryption

Abstract:
In this work, we introduce FPTracker as a standalone, portable and practical browser that utilizes static and dynamic analysis to obtain concise results on a large set of websites. In contrast to the previous works, which rely on native code instrumentation that have low performance and high cost for monitoring each fingerprint Application programming interface (API), FPTracker is developed as an independent tool that does not need to interact with users' web browsers. In order to prove the usefulness of FPTracker, we have evaluated the top 10,000 European websites (according to Alexa.com) that comprise 1,393,426 links. We have chosen popular European websites to discern how these websites employ user tracking third parties concerning the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Accordingly, we found that 117,012 links out of 1,393,426 use invisible user fingerprinting systems. For instance, one of the biggest European banks and a leading advertising website in Germany still fingerprints their visitors.

Pages: 25 to 36

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2019

Publication date: July 28, 2019

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3980

ISBN: 978-1-61208-729-0

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from July 28, 2019 to August 2, 2019