Dan Sarkar

Examining Privacy Practices of Websites Using Large Scale Data Dan Sarkar

Protecting end-users privacy and building trust are the two most important factors needed to support the growth of e-Commerce. The increased dependence on the Internet for a wide variety of daily transactions causes a corresponding loss in privacy for many users, as virtually all websites collect data from users directly or indirectly while performing business with them. In this thesis we have used a web crawler named ?iWatch? which serves as an instrument to collect basic statistics on the state of privacy, security, and data-collection practices on the web. We have looked at several interesting practices, and ways of examining the data.