Control What You Include! Server-Side Protection against Third Party Web Tracking
This work provides a solution for website developers and users to protect against cross-site tracking while maintaining web functionality, representing a novel approach rather than an incremental improvement.
The paper tackles the problem of third-party web tracking by proposing a privacy-preserving web architecture that allows website developers to include third-party content without enabling user tracking, addressing the trade-off between functionality and privacy.
Third party tracking is the practice by which third parties recognize users accross different websites as they browse the web. Recent studies show that 90% of websites contain third party content that is tracking its users across the web. Website developers often need to include third party content in order to provide basic functionality. However, when a developer includes a third party content, she cannot know whether the third party contains tracking mechanisms. If a website developer wants to protect her users from being tracked, the only solution is to exclude any third-party content, thus trading functionality for privacy. We describe and implement a privacy-preserving web architecture that gives website developers a control over third party tracking: developers are able to include functionally useful third party content, the same time ensuring that the end users are not tracked by the third parties.