Automated Experiments on Ad Privacy Settings: A Tale of Opacity, Choice, and Discrimination
Title | Automated Experiments on Ad Privacy Settings: A Tale of Opacity, Choice, and Discrimination |
Publication Type | Conference Paper |
Year of Publication | 2015 |
Authors | Datta, A., Tschantz M. Carl, & Datta A. |
Published in | Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies |
Volume | 2015 |
Issue | 1 |
Page(s) | 92-112 |
Date Published | 04/2015 |
Other Numbers | 3803 |
Keywords | behavioral advertising, blackbox analysis, choice discrimination, information flow, transparency |
Abstract | To partly address peoples concerns over web tracking, Google has created the Ad Settings webpage to provide information about and some choice over the profiles Google creates on users. We present AdFisher, an automated tool that explores how user behaviors, Googles ads, and Ad Settings interact. AdFisher can run browser-based experiments and analyze data using machine learning and significance tests. Our tool uses a rigorous experimental design and statistical analysis to ensure the statistical soundness of our results. We use AdFisher to find that the Ad Settings was opaque about some features of a users profile, that it does provide some choice on ads, and that these choices can lead to seemingly discriminatory ads. In particular, we found that visiting webpages associated with substance abuse changed the ads shown but not the settings page. We also found that setting the gender to female resulted in getting fewer instances of an ad related to high paying jobs than setting it to male. We cannot determine who caused these findings due to our limited visibility into the ad ecosystem, which includes Google, advertisers, websites, and users. Nevertheless, these results can form the starting point for deeper investigations by either the companies themselves or by regulatory bodies. |
Acknowledgment | This work was partially supported by funding provided through National Science Foundation grant CCF: 0424422 (Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST)) and CNS: 1064688 ("Semantics and Enforcement of Privacy Policies: Information Use and Purpose"). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors or originators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. |
URL | http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/automatedexperiments15.pdf |
DOI | 10.1515/popets-2015-0007 |
Bibliographic Notes | Proceedings of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2015), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pp. 92-112 |
Abbreviated Authors | Amit Datta, M. C. Tschantz, and Anupam Datta |
ICSI Research Group | Networking and Security |
ICSI Publication Type | Article in conference proceedings |