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Browsing behavior exposes identities on the Web
Marcos Oliveira1,2, Junran Yang3, Daniel Griffiths4
1Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. m.a.oliveira@vu.nl.
Your web browsing behavior creates a unique digital fingerprint. Even just your top four most visited websites can identify 95% of people, highlighting online privacy risks.
Area of Science:
- Computer Science
- Information Security
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Online privacy concerns are growing.
- Understanding the uniqueness of web browsing behavior is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if web browsing behavior can uniquely identify individuals.
- To assess the stability and re-identifiability of browsing data.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of web browsing traces.
- Identification of individuals based on visited web domains.
Main Results:
- The top four most visited web domains were sufficient to identify 95% of individuals.
- 80% of individuals could be re-identified within contiguous time slices of data.
- Web browsing behavior provides a stable and unique digital fingerprint.
Conclusions:
- Basic online habits, like frequently visited sites, are highly unique.
- Limited browsing data poses a significant privacy threat.
- Existing concerns about online privacy are reinforced by these findings.
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