Analyzing the Effectiveness of Privacy Related Add-Ons Employed to Thwart Web Based Tracking

With the rise in popularity of using websites to distribute content to users, content creators needed to gain revenue from page views. To achieve this, they use third-party networks to distribute advertisements and perform analytics on users to customize their advertisements. These networks build up a profile of their users (e.g., navigation patterns, visit frequency, personal interest), which poses a significant privacy risk as this information can be sold to others or used in targeted advertising. In order for users to protect themselves, they need to install add-ons for their web browser which removes third-party content. This paper surveys some of the existing add-ons to block third-party content, and determine which add-ons are required to provide adequate protection. Further analytics are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of those add-ons through the experiments.