Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Magisterarbeit - SemanticLab

• Data necessary to identify the type of communication
• Data necessary to identify users communication equipment or what purports to be
their equipment
• Data necessary to identify the location of mobile communication equipment
2.4.2.3. Threats to privacy
Exactly this ability to track and trace every action of users on the Internet poses a threat
to privacy as users are not able to make use of the Internet in an anonymous to access
information way as often proclaimed [Woo06]. This is especially true as ISP nowadays
have to store even more information about their customers as described above [Dow05].
This collected data can technically be used in all kind of ways. For example, when users
visit websites, these visits are normally logged by the webserver which processes the
requests necessary to display the website in the customers’ browser. Every single access
is logged in the logfiles of the webserver including the IP-address 7 of the user [NLC].
Now the IP-address is the piece of information which links the data collected in the
logfiles of the webserver with the data collected of the customers’ ISP. So technically,
every user can be personally identified if connecting these two databases, provided that
this data is logged. With these data retention policies in place, specific users can be
kept under “online surveillance” by government agencies [Dow05].
These issues show the significance of this topic and that (online) privacy will become
an even more important topic in the future.
2.4.3. Online profiling
2.4.3.1. Purpose
Today, “online profiling is the collection of information about Internet surfing behaviour
across many different websites for the purpose of formulating a profile of users habits and
interests” [Wie02], especially in online advertising [Wei07]. Only by collecting user data
and connecting this data, users’ preferences can be understood and hence additional
value can be delivered on a website or other Internet applications [Rub08].
2.4.3.2. Collected data
For online profiling all kind of data is collected. Mainly, there are the following sources
of data: (webserver) logfiles, information collected via input provided on websites and
special applications such as web bugs, cookies or software agents [Wie02]. Both descriptive
data (such as customers’ preferences) and identifying data (such as a customers’
name or address) can be collected. [Ste07] describes an experiment where webserver
7 An IP-address is a unique number on the Internet to uniquely identify a network device such as a
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computer