Publications about tracking and spying technologies
Publications about tracking and spying technologies
Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border: A Guide for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices
Abstract: Anytime you travel internationally, especially into the USA, you risk a broad, invasive search of your laptop, phone, and other digital devices – including the copying of your data and seizing of your property for an indefinite time. To help travelers protect themselves and their private information during the busy holiday travel period, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a report with important guidance for safeguarding your personal data at the U.S border. Use a second mobile phone without any personal data inside, and remove any sensitive data from your laptop. Encryption is not a good idea, as it results in pasword request, and theft of the device if you refuse to reveal the password.
Download (released 2011): EFF.org (local copy) 1/2 MiB PDF
Flash Cookies and Privacy II: Now with HTML5 and ETag Respawning
Abstract: In this followup study, we reassess the Flash cookies landscape and examine a new tracking vector, HTML5 local storage and Cache-Cookies via ETags. We found over 5,600 standard HTTP cookies on popular sites, over 4,900 were from third parties. Google-controlled cookies were present on 97 of the top 100 sites, including popular government websites. Seventeen sites were using HTML5, and seven of those sites had HTML5 local storage and HTTP cookies with matching values. Flash cookies were present on 37 of the top 100 sites. We found two sites that were respawning cookies, including one site – hulu.com – where both Flash and cache cookies were employed to make identifiers more persistent. The cache cookie method used ETags, and is capable of unique tracking even where all cookies are blocked by the user and “Private Browsing Mode” is enabled.
Download (released 2011): Social Science Research Network (html5.pdf local copy) 1.7 MiB PDF
