Paper Info
Title
Data Siphoning Across Borders: The Role of Internet Tracking
Abstract
We investigate the role of Internet tracking in siphoning users' personal data from one country to another. We use the term "siphon" to indicate a one-way channel that once set up will result in a continuous flow of personal information from the source to the destination. We conduct a web privacy measurement study using a Germany-Russia scenario; we collect and analyze tracker data from 12 mainstream news sites in Germany, 1000 top sites in Germany and Russia, and 1000000 top sites in the world. We identify five tracking patterns that can siphon data from users in Germany to Russia; two key parameters of the tracking patterns, distance-to-data and type-of-control, determine timeliness, accuracy and granularity of siphoned data. Results show that Russian trackers are widespread on German news sites. Lastly, we discuss the impact of data siphoning on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Analyses show that tracking patterns can facilitate siphoning of personal data across borders while subverting requirements of GDPR.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/TPS-ISA48467.2019.00028
2019 First IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems and Applications (TPS-ISA)
Keywords
DocType
ISBN
privacy,tracking,siphoning,data protection,GDPR,cross border
Conference
978-1-7281-6742-8
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
6
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ashwini Rao100.68
Jürgen Pfeffer234626.57