BU Research Blog

Café Scientifique takes place on the first Tuesday of the month at Café Boscanova

Enjoy listening to a short talk before engaging in debate and discussion around that topic.

As the use of the Internet increases, so do the threats an everyday user faces. One of the most common Internet threats is web tracking, which enables an entity to gain unauthorised access to a user’s personal data while the user is browsing the web, thus violating user privacy. Over the years, many client storage technologies, such as cookies, have been used for this purpose and have been extensively studied. This talk will focus on three newer client storage mechanisms; Web Storage, Web SQL Database and IndexedDB. Presenting the results from a large-scale analysis of their usage, which examined the extent they are used for tracking purposes, we’ll discuss whether popular browsers for desktops (Firefox & Chrome) and mobile devices (smartphones & tablets) protect their users from trackers that use Web Storage, Web SQL Database and IndexedDB.