학술논문

Browsing behavior exposes identities on the Web
Document Type
Working Paper
Source
Subject
Computer Science - Computers and Society
Computer Science - Information Retrieval
Computer Science - Social and Information Networks
Physics - Physics and Society
Statistics - Applications
Language
Abstract
How easy is it to uniquely identify a person based solely on their web browsing behavior? Here we show that when people navigate the Web, their online traces produce fingerprints that identify them. Merely the four most visited web domains are enough to identify 95% of the individuals. These digital fingerprints are stable and render high re-identifiability. We demonstrate that we can re-identify 80% of the individuals in separate time slices of data. Such a privacy threat persists even with limited information about individuals' browsing behavior, reinforcing existing concerns around online privacy.
Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure