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Coauthor here. As it turns out, this is one of three papers released near-simultaneously that uncover the extent of tracking on TVs or IoT devices more generall
by randomwalker 7y ago
Coauthor here. As it turns out, this is one of three papers released near-simultaneously that uncover the extent of tracking on TVs or IoT devices more generally. I've written up a survey of the three papers and what I thought were especially interesting findings, along with some thoughts on why targeted advertising as a business model for TV platforms is harmful to users: https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1177570679232876544 https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1177570679232876544
Direct links to the other two papers:
https://moniotrlab.ccis.neu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ren-imc19.pdf https://moniotrlab.ccis.neu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/r...
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.09848.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.09848.pdf
- blub 7y agoThanks for your work. I noticed you include gstatic.com and a subdomain of cloudfront.com in the tracker domains list. Are these really known to be used for tracking or are they included because they're controlled by Google & Amazon?
- dictum 7y agoI saved the paper for reading later, so this may be already discussed in it, but enough information leaks through the Referer HTTP header when browsing the web in a traditional browser. I've never inspected Recaptcha (on gstatic.com), but it does some degree of tracking, ostensibly to detect unusual usage patterns and pick who gets to help train Google's ML models with distorted street objects, and who's never shown the captcha window.
- sifar 7y agoThank you. Just curious, during your research did you face any issues due to the auto-update feature at the app/device level which would set you back. If so, how did you work around it other than disabling it ?