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Measuring Third-party Tracker Power across Web and Mobile

Published: 07 August 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Third-party networks collect vast amounts of data about users via websites 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 article 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.

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    Published In

    cover image ACM Transactions on Internet Technology
    ACM Transactions on Internet Technology  Volume 18, Issue 4
    Special Issue on Computational Ethics and Accountability, Special Issue on Economics of Security and Privacy and Regular Papers
    November 2018
    348 pages
    ISSN:1533-5399
    EISSN:1557-6051
    DOI:10.1145/3210373
    • Editor:
    • Munindar P. Singh
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 07 August 2018
    Accepted: 01 December 2017
    Revised: 01 October 2017
    Received: 01 November 2016
    Published in TOIT Volume 18, Issue 4

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    Author Tags

    1. Privacy
    2. antitrust
    3. competition
    4. economics
    5. tracking

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    • UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)TraceMonitor: A Novel AI-Based Chrome Extension to Enhance User Awareness of Privacy Leakage towards Green Web Browsing2024 IEEE Green Technologies Conference (GreenTech)10.1109/GreenTech58819.2024.10520452(59-63)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2024
    • (2024)Sharing is Not Always Caring: Delving Into Personal Data Transfer Compliance in Android AppsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.334942512(5256-5269)Online publication date: 2024
    • (2024)ROI: a method for identifying organizations receiving personal dataComputing10.1007/s00607-023-01209-2106:1(163-184)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
    • (2023)Follow the Data! A Strategy for Tracing Infrastructural PowerMedia and Communication10.17645/mac.v11i2.646411:2Online publication date: 13-Apr-2023
    • (2023)Governing artificial intelligence in the media and communications sectorInternet Policy Review10.14763/2023.1.168312:1Online publication date: 21-Feb-2023
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    • (2023)Privacy-preserving targeted mobile advertising: A Blockchain-based framework for mobile adsJournal of Network and Computer Applications10.1016/j.jnca.2022.103559211(103559)Online publication date: Feb-2023
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