Does this ad seem familiar to you?

Zhiwei (Alina) Gu

Image following scenario: you are trying to study on a website. Of course, you do not want to pay to remove the ads. When you just start to focus on the material, suddenly an ad pops out. Then you notice the ad is about something you are wondering about buying, and that attracts all your attention. The advertisement that pops up is known as a targeted advertisement. Just as its name, only a certain group of people could receive this advertisement, which are people who are considered to be interested in this topic. 

When noticing this advertisement is targeted towards you, just as most other people, you may start feeling concerned about your privacy. (1) You would probably start reducing personal information disclosure while complaining to people around you. (2) Advertisers may be negatively affected by these actions, but they could still benefit from targeted advertising most of the time. Research shows that targeted advertising could double conversion rate, which is the percentage of people who actually shop over all visitors on a website. (3) 

The next question is how do advertisers know that you are interested in this topic. The answer is using web browsing history. (4) When browsing, web browsing history is usually collected by the browser to form a list of web pages you visited. This could help users to find the web pages they previously used easier. In addition to web browsers, cookies could also collect web browsing history. Cookies here refer to tools that could store users’ data. (5) Some of the cookies do not belong to the website. Instead, they are from third-party organizations and are embedded in other websites. They are known as third-party cookies. A third-party cookie could be applied on multiple different websites. Based on web browsing history collected from users, programs could predict what the users are likely to be interested in. If a third-party cookie collects information of the same user from multiple websites, the image of the user could be more complete. (5)

Information collected from users is used in a system known as Real-Time Bidding. This is an automatic process that decides which advertisement is shown to you. Advertisers bid up the price to obtain the chance of showing their advertisements. (6) Web browsing history is used as a way to understand the audience and decide the suitable price to pay. It is sent to all firms that are involved in the bidding. Because this process takes place in a short amount of time, lots of privacy issues may arise. Information of users is usually collected without consent of users, transferred without encryption, and delivered to all advertisers. (7) 

When you feel concerned about your privacy, there are several actions people usually take. A common one is using ad blockers. However, not all the ad blockers can actually help protect privacy. Most ad blockers use a standard black and white list to decide which websites to block and to pass through. Websites that actually collect personal information may not be included in the list, and therefore reduce its effectiveness. (8) It is actually hard for people to protect their web browsing history. The collection process is hard to notice. Even when you notice a privacy leak, people are usually not equipped with enough technical knowledge to deal with the system. (7) There is still a long way to go on protecting privacy. 

Bio: I am Zhiwei (Alina) Gu. I am currently a sophomore intended to major in statistics. The story at the beginning of this article is just what happened to me. This makes me interested in web browsing history and privacy. 

References: 

  1. Chellap, Ramnath K., Raymond G. Sin. 2005. “Personalization versus Privacy: An Empirical Examination of the Online Consumer’s Dilemma”. Information Technology Management 6(1): 181-202.  

  2. Son, Jai-Yeol, Sung S. Kim. 2008. “Internet Users' Information Privacy-Protective Responses: A Taxonomy and a Nomological Model”. MIS Quarterly 32(3): 503-529.

  3. Beales, Howard (2010). "The Value of Behavioral Targeting". Network Advertising Initiative.

  4. Hennig, Nicole. 2018. “Privacy and security online: best practices for cybersecurity”. Library Technology Reports 54(3): 1-37.

  5. Binns, Reuben, and Elettra Bietti. 2020. “Dissolving Privacy, One Merger at a Time: Competition, Data and Third Party Tracking”. Computer Law & Security Review: The International Journal of Technology Law and Practice 16(1): 1-19.

  6. Aguirre, Elizabeth, Dominik Mahr, Dhruv Grewal, Ko de Ruyter, Martin Wetzels. 2015. “Unraveling the Personalization Paradox: The Effect of Information Collection and Trust-Building Strategies on Online Advertisement Effectiveness”. Journal of Retailing 91(1): 34-49.

  7. Estrada-Jimenez, Jose, Javier Parra-Arnau, Ana Rodriguez-Hoyos, Jordi Forne. 2017. “Online advertising: Analysis of privacy threats and protection approaches”. Computer Communications 100(1): 32-51.

  8. Malandrino, Delfina, Vittorio Scarano. 2013. “Privacy leakage on the Web: Diffusion and countermeasures”. Computer Networks 57(14): 2833-2855.