Gunes Acar - From Cookies to Keyloggers: Understanding Modern Online Tracking Techniques

Abstract

The talk will offer an interactive exploration of the online tracking ecosystem, through practical demonstrations and hands-on examples. Online tracking, which involves monitoring user activity across websites and mobile apps, has advanced beyond traditional methods such as cookies. Modern online trackers use more covert techniques such as device fingerprinting, email sniffing, and session recording scripts that operate similarly to keyloggers. Turning to mobile platforms, the talk will explain how precise location data collected from mobile apps can be used to personally identify users and deduce sensitive information. Participants will experience live demonstrations of crawlers and automation tools that researchers use to identify privacy infringements at scale. The talk will conclude with practical recommendations for practitioners and end-users to safeguard user privacy. The talk will be given in English and participants do not need to be familiar with the subjects to follow the talk.

Biography

Gunes Acar is an Assistant Professor at the Digital Security group of Radboud University. Gunes’ research focuses on uncovering security and privacy threats stemming from websites, mobile apps, and IoT devices, with a unique emphasis on unconventional online tracking technologies. He also studies deceptive and manipulative (dark) design patterns and anonymous communication systems such as Tor. His pioneering research have received prestigious awards such as the CNIL-Inria Privacy Protection Award, influenced web standards, and led to the deployment of fixes across websites, browsers and smart home devices. His work has received extensive coverage by major media outlets, including the BBC, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Wired, NOS, and Le Monde. Prior to Radboud, Gunes worked at Princeton University, and KU Leuven, where he also obtained his PhD from. Outside of academia, Gunes has been an active contributor to open source projects, and he has given invited talks at several regulatory bodies in the EU and the US. More on Gunes’ research and contributions can be found on https://gunesacar.net.

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