A First Look at Related Website Sets

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: McQuistin, Stephen, Snyder, Peter, Haddadi, Hamed, Tyson, Gareth
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author McQuistin, Stephen
Snyder, Peter
Haddadi, Hamed
Tyson, Gareth
author_facet McQuistin, Stephen
Snyder, Peter
Haddadi, Hamed
Tyson, Gareth
contents We present the first measurement of the user-effect and privacy impact of "Related Website Sets," a recent proposal to reduce browser privacy protections between two sites if those sites are related to each other. An assumption (both explicitly and implicitly) underpinning the Related Website Sets proposal is that users can accurately determine if two sites are related via the same entity. In this work, we probe this assumption via measurements and a user study of 30 participants, to assess the ability of Web users to determine if two sites are (according to the Related Website Sets feature) related to each other. We find that this is largely not the case. Our findings indicate that 42 (36.8%) of the user determinations in our study are incorrect in privacy-harming ways, where users think that sites are not related, but would be treated as related (and so due less privacy protections) by the Related Website Sets feature. Additionally, 22 (73.3%) of participants made at least one incorrect evaluation during the study. We also characterise the Related Website Sets list, its composition over time, and its governance.
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A First Look at Related Website Sets
McQuistin, Stephen
Snyder, Peter
Haddadi, Hamed
Tyson, Gareth
Networking and Internet Architecture
We present the first measurement of the user-effect and privacy impact of "Related Website Sets," a recent proposal to reduce browser privacy protections between two sites if those sites are related to each other. An assumption (both explicitly and implicitly) underpinning the Related Website Sets proposal is that users can accurately determine if two sites are related via the same entity. In this work, we probe this assumption via measurements and a user study of 30 participants, to assess the ability of Web users to determine if two sites are (according to the Related Website Sets feature) related to each other. We find that this is largely not the case. Our findings indicate that 42 (36.8%) of the user determinations in our study are incorrect in privacy-harming ways, where users think that sites are not related, but would be treated as related (and so due less privacy protections) by the Related Website Sets feature. Additionally, 22 (73.3%) of participants made at least one incorrect evaluation during the study. We also characterise the Related Website Sets list, its composition over time, and its governance.
title A First Look at Related Website Sets
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.07495