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arXiv:1609.07190 (cs)
[Submitted on 22 Sep 2016 (v1), last revised 26 Oct 2016 (this version, v2)]

Title:Tracking the Trackers: Towards Understanding the Mobile Advertising and Tracking Ecosystem

Authors:Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, Srikanth Sundaresan, Abbas Razaghpanah, Rishab Nithyanand, Mark Allman, Christian Kreibich, Phillipa Gill
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Abstract:Third-party services form an integral part of the mobile ecosystem: they allow app developers to add features such as performance analytics and social network integration, and to monetize their apps by enabling user tracking and targeted ad delivery. At present users, researchers, and regulators all have at best limited understanding of this third-party ecosystem. In this paper we seek to shrink this gap. Using data from users of our ICSI Haystack app we gain a rich view of the mobile ecosystem: we identify and characterize domains associated with mobile advertising and user tracking, thereby taking an important step towards greater transparency. We furthermore outline our steps towards a public catalog and census of analytics services, their behavior, their personal data collection processes, and their use across mobile apps.
Subjects: Computers and Society (cs.CY)
Cite as: arXiv:1609.07190 [cs.CY]
  (or arXiv:1609.07190v2 [cs.CY] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1609.07190

Submission history

From: Rishab Nithyanand [view email]
[v1] Thu, 22 Sep 2016 23:45:20 UTC (163 KB)
[v2] Wed, 26 Oct 2016 15:50:14 UTC (162 KB)
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Srikanth Sundaresan
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