SoK: Advances and Open Problems in Web Tracking
Yash Vekaria (1), Yohan Beugin (2), Shaoor Munir (1), Gunes Acar (3), Nataliia Bielova (4), Steven Englehardt (5), Umar Iqbal (6), Alexandros Kapravelos (7), Pierre Laperdrix (8), Nick Nikiforakis (9), Jason Polakis (10), Franziska Roesner (11), Zubair Shafiq (1)

TL;DR
This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution, techniques, countermeasures, and regulatory landscape of web tracking, highlighting current challenges and future research directions in this complex field.
Contribution
It consolidates fragmented research on web tracking into a unified framework, analyzing technical mechanisms, countermeasures, and regulations, and identifying open challenges and future directions.
Findings
Web tracking techniques have become increasingly sophisticated.
Browser anti-tracking measures are impacting tracking practices.
Regulatory enforcement is shaping the future of web tracking.
Abstract
Web tracking is a pervasive and opaque practice that enables personalized advertising, retargeting, and conversion tracking. Over time, it has evolved into a sophisticated and invasive ecosystem, employing increasingly complex techniques to monitor and profile users across the web. The research community has a long track record of analyzing new web tracking techniques, designing and evaluating the effectiveness of countermeasures, and assessing compliance with privacy regulations. Despite a substantial body of work on web tracking, the literature remains fragmented across distinctly scoped studies, making it difficult to identify overarching trends, connect new but related techniques, and identify research gaps in the field. Today, web tracking is undergoing a once-in-a-generation transformation, driven by fundamental shifts in the advertising industry, the adoption of anti-tracking…
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Taxonomy
TopicsRecommender Systems and Techniques
