Browser Fingerprinting as user tracking technology

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference Paper published in Proceedingspeer-review

    Abstract

    The Web has become an indispensable part of our society and is currently most commonly used mode of information delivery. Millions of users access the free services provided by the websites on daily basis and while providing these free services websites track and profile their web users. In this environment, the ability to track users and their online habits can be very lucrative for advertising companies, yet very intrusive for the privacy of users. The objective of this paper is to study about the increasingly common yet hardly discussed technique of identifying individual Web users and tracking them across multiple websites known as 'Browser Fingerprinting'. A unique browser fingerprint is derived by the unique pattern of information visible whenever a computer visits a website. The permutations thus collected are sufficiently distinct that they can be used as a tool for tracking. Unlike cookies, Fingerprints are generated on server side and are difficult for a user to influence. The main objective of this research is study about how the fingerprinting was evolved, its positives and negatives, what threat it poses to users' online privacy and what countermeasures could be used to prevent it. This paper will also analyse which different properties the browsers send to the server, allowing a unique fingerprint of those browsers to be created.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of 2017 11th International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control, ISCO 2017
    EditorsIEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
    Place of PublicationCoimbatore, India
    PublisherIEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
    Pages103-111
    Number of pages9
    Edition1
    ISBN (Electronic)9781509027170
    ISBN (Print)9781509027187
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 14 Feb 2017
    Event2017 11th International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control, ISCO 2017 - Coimbatore, India
    Duration: 5 Jan 20176 Jan 2017

    Conference

    Conference2017 11th International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control, ISCO 2017
    Country/TerritoryIndia
    CityCoimbatore
    Period5/01/176/01/17

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