论文标题
使用隐形像素的Hitchhiker的Facebook Web跟踪指南,然后单击ID
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Facebook Web Tracking with Invisible Pixels and Click IDs
论文作者
论文摘要
在过去的几年中,广告公司使用了各种跟踪方法来持续跟踪整个网络上的用户。这种跟踪方法通常包括第一方和第三方饼干,饼干同步以及多种指纹机制。 Facebook(FB)最近引入了一种新的标记机制,该机制将一个时间标签附加为URL参数(FBCLID),以在传开的其他网站上。尽管这样的标签似乎没有足够的信息来持续跟踪用户,但我们证明,尽管具有短暂性的性质,但与FB像素相结合时,它可以有助于持续监视用户浏览的行为i)i)i)不同的网站,ii)每个网站上的不同操作,iii)时间,即过去以及将来。我们将这种对用户的在线监视称为FB Web跟踪。我们发现,FB像素在网站上跟踪广泛的用户活动,并具有令人震惊的细节,尤其是在GDPR下属于敏感类别的网站上。另外,我们展示了如何使用FBCLID标签匹配,从而将其匿名化,从而在遥远的过去(甚至在这些用户拥有FB帐户之前)在FB Pixel跟踪的在线用户的活动。实际上,通过将此标签与具有滚动到期日期的cookie相结合,FB也可以跟踪用户将来的浏览活动。我们的实验结果表明,10K最受欢迎的网站中有23%采用了这项技术,可以在网络上跟踪这一活动。此外,我们的纵向研究表明,这种类型的用户活动跟踪可以追溯到2015年。简而言之,如果用户首次创建今天的FB帐户,FB在某些条件下,FB可以匹配他们过去的Web浏览活动与他们新创建的FB配置文件,从2015年到达2015年,并继续在未来的活动中跟踪其活动。
Over the past years, advertisement companies have used various tracking methods to persistently track users across the web. Such tracking methods usually include first and third-party cookies, cookie synchronization, as well as a variety of fingerprinting mechanisms. Facebook (FB) recently introduced a new tagging mechanism that attaches a one-time tag as a URL parameter (FBCLID) on outgoing links to other websites. Although such a tag does not seem to have enough information to persistently track users, we demonstrate that despite its ephemeral nature, when combined with FB Pixel, it can aid in persistently monitoring user browsing behavior across i) different websites, ii) different actions on each website, iii) time, i.e., both in the past as well as in the future. We refer to this online monitoring of users as FB web tracking. We find that FB Pixel tracks a wide range of user activities on websites with alarming detail, especially on websites classified as sensitive categories under GDPR. Also, we show how the FBCLID tag can be used to match, and thus de-anonymize, activities of online users performed in the distant past (even before those users had a FB account) tracked by FB Pixel. In fact, by combining this tag with cookies that have rolling expiration dates, FB can also keep track of users' browsing activities in the future as well. Our experimental results suggest that 23% of the 10k most popular websites have adopted this technology, and can contribute to this activity tracking on the web. Furthermore, our longitudinal study shows that this type of user activity tracking can go as far back as 2015. Simply said, if a user creates for the first time a FB account today, FB could, under some conditions, match their anonymously collected past web browsing activity to their newly created FB profile, from as far back as 2015 and continue tracking their activity in the future.