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Article

Betrayed by your ads!: reconstructing user profiles from targeted ads

Authors:

Claude Castelluccia,

Mohamed-Ali Kaafar,

Minh-Dung TranAuthors Info & Claims

PETS'12: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Pages 1 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31680-7_1

Published: 11 July 2012 Publication History

Abstract

In targeted (or behavioral) advertising, users' behaviors are tracked over time in order to customize served ads to their interests. This creates serious privacy concerns since for the purpose of profiling, private information is collected and centralized by a limited number of companies. Despite claims that this information is secure, there is a potential for this information to be leaked through the customized services these companies are offering. In this paper, we show that targeted ads expose users' private data not only to ad providers but also to any entity that has access to users' ads. We propose a methodology to filter targeted ads and infer users' interests from them. We show that an adversary that has access to only a small number of websites containing Google ads can infer users' interests with an accuracy of more than 79% (Precision) and reconstruct as much as 58% of a Google Ads profile in general (Recall). This paper is, to our knowledge, the first work that identifies and quantifies information leakage through ads served in targeted advertising.

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Google Adwords Placement Tool (2011), http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/ answer.py?hl=en&answer=179238/

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Google Display Network (2011), http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/

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Network Advertising Initiative (2011), http://www.networkadvertising.org/

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Tracking Protection Lists (2011), http://www.privacyonline.org.uk/

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Google Ads Preferences (2012), http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

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Personalized Advertising from Microsoft (2012), http://choice.live.com/AdvertisementChoice/Default.aspx

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Yahoo! Ad Interest Manager (2012), http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/opt_out/targeting/

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Castelluccia, C., De Cristofaro, E., Perito, D.: Private Information Disclosure from Web Searches. In: Atallah, M.J., Hopper, N.J. (eds.) PETS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6205, pp. 38-55. Springer, Heidelberg (2010).

Digital Library

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Korolova, A.: Privacy violations using microtargeted ads: A case study. In: ICDM Workshops (2010).

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Cited By

Cabañas JCuevas ÁArrate ACuevas R(2020)Does Facebook use sensitive data for advertising purposes?Communications of the ACM10.1145/342636164:1(62-69)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3426361
Corner MLevine B(2018)MicroMobileProceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services10.1145/3210240.3210326(310-322)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3210240.3210326
Corner MLevine BIsmail OUpreti AVan der Merwe KGreenstein BSrinivasan K(2017)Advertising-based MeasurementProceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3117811.3117844(435-447)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3117811.3117844
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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Guide Proceedings

PETS'12: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

July 2012

319 pages

ISBN:9783642316791

Editors:
Simone Fischer-Hübner
Karlstad University, Department of Computer Science, Karlstad, Sweden
,
Matthew Wright
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, Sweden

Publisher

Springer-Verlag

Berlin, Heidelberg

Publication History

Published: 11 July 2012

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Cited By

Cabañas JCuevas ÁArrate ACuevas R(2020)Does Facebook use sensitive data for advertising purposes?Communications of the ACM10.1145/342636164:1(62-69)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3426361
Corner MLevine B(2018)MicroMobileProceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services10.1145/3210240.3210326(310-322)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3210240.3210326
Corner MLevine BIsmail OUpreti AVan der Merwe KGreenstein BSrinivasan K(2017)Advertising-based MeasurementProceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3117811.3117844(435-447)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3117811.3117844
Baumann PKatzenbeisser SStopczynski MTews EWeippl EKatzenbeisser SDe Capitani di Vimercati S(2016)Disguised Chromium BrowserProceedings of the 2016 ACM on Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society10.1145/2994620.2994621(37-46)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2994620.2994621
Meng WLee BXing XLee WBourdeau JHendler JNkambou RHorrocks IZhao B(2016)TrackMeOrNotProceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web10.1145/2872427.2883034(99-109)Online publication date: 11-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2872427.2883034
Ullah IBoreli RKanhere SChawla SAhn GDatta A(2014)ProfileGuardProceedings of the 13th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society10.1145/2665943.2665961(83-92)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2665943.2665961
Barford PCanadi IKrushevskaja DMa QMuthukrishnan SChung CBroder AShim KSuel T(2014)AdscapeProceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web10.1145/2566486.2567992(597-608)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2566486.2567992
Malandrino DPetta AScarano VSerra LSpinelli RKrishnamurthy BSadeghi AForesti S(2013)Privacy awareness about information leakageProceedings of the 12th ACM workshop on Workshop on privacy in the electronic society10.1145/2517840.2517868(279-284)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2517840.2517868

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