29 lines
1.6 KiB
TeX
29 lines
1.6 KiB
TeX
\chapter{Introduction}
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\label{chap:introduction}
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The Internet has seen an unprecedented rise in traffic over the last few years
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which is accelerating still. Due to this growth, an increasing amount of user
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data is sent over the Internet. This user data is analyzed by companies in big
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industries such as social networking, advertising, internet service providers
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and news web sites. Although many services online appear to be free for
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individual users, the companies behind them have to sustain themselves and make
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profits every year. This has led to firms working extensively with user data to
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extract meaningful information from the way users use their services. The
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collected and inferred information can then be sold to interested parties which
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allows those parties to personalize their service, yielding higher customer
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engagement and thus higher profits. The end users themselves receive the short
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end of the stick by---often unconsciously---giving away their data without
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gaining much in turn. Because the means of data collection on the Internet are
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becoming increasingly invasive and omnipresent, tools to defend against such
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privacy intrusions are developed. It is beneficial to users to know how web
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sites are tracking their customers so that they can protect themselves against
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these tracking mechanisms. The aim of this thesis is to give an overview of
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tracking methods and tools to defend oneself against them. It seeks to answer
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the underlying research question of \emph{Which stateful tracking methods are
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used to track individuals on the Internet and which countermeasures exist?}
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\section{Terms and Scope}
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\label{sec:terms and scope}
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