With a focus on measuring Internet censorship, we first conduct an empirical study of the I2P anonymity network, shedding light on important properties of the network and its censorship resistance. These insights can then be used to not only aid in the development of effective censorship circumvention tools, but also help related stakeholders making informed decisions to maximize the privacy benefits of privacy-enhancing technologies. We show that empirical network measurement, when conducted at scale and in a longitudinal manner, is an essential approach to gain insights into (1) censors' blocking behaviors and (2) key characteristics of anti-censorship and privacy-enhancing technologies.
In this dissertation, we present two related lines of research that seek to tackle the twin problems of Internet censorship and online surveillance via an empirical lens. Internet censorship and online surveillance have led to severe human rights violations, including the freedom of expression, the right to information, and privacy. Malicious actors around the world, ranging from nation states to private organizations, are increasingly making use of technologies to not only control the free flow of information, but also eavesdrop on Internet users' online activities. With the Internet having become an indispensable means of communication in modern society, censorship and surveillance in cyberspace are getting more prevalent. On mobile devices, but not desktop devices, Firefox also shares device identifiers. In the case of Edge these are device and hardware identifiers that are hard/impossible for users to change. Additionally, Chrome, Firefox and Edge all share long-lived identifiers that can be used to link connections together and so potentially allow tracking over time. In contrast, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge all share details of web pages visited with backend servers. Overall, we find that both the desktop and mobile versions of Brave do not use any identifiers allowing tracking of IP address over time, and do not share details of web pages visited with backend servers.
Similarly, with regard to the Chrome extension update service accessed by Chromium-base browsers (Chrome, Brave, Edge). With regard to shared services, all of the browsers make use of a safe browsing service to mitigate phishing attacks and our measurements indicate that this raises few privacy concerns. Our aim is to assess the privacy risks associated with this data exchange between a browser and its back-end servers. We measure the data sent to their back-end servers by five browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave Browser and Microsoft Edge, during normal web browsing on both desktop and mobile devices.
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