Understanding and Addressing Online Tracking: Online Privacy's Regulatory Turn

Computing and storage breakthroughs over the last few decades have given rise to online tracking abilities that outpace current-day privacy-enhancing tools, social norms, and privacy regulations. Users lack the tools they need to block the types of tracking they cannot see and have very little control over; data stewards (i.e., companies processing user data) lack an understanding of what types of tracking practices users find normatively problematic; and policymakers lack effective feedback on real-world implementations of the data-focused or tracking-adjacent laws they are drafting-at a time when these regulations are in their infancy and feedback is crucial. Users should be able to navigate the web without falling victim to surreptitious tracking technologies; companies should be aware of what types of tracking users find most problematic; and legislators should be able to rely on empirically driven measurement studies to help them understand where the law falls short and where companies need help. My dissertation work focuses on improving online privacy by developing tracker-blocking tools, investigating user perceptions of online tracking, and systematizing knowledge as it relates to the measurement of statutory instruments. I focus here on the last, in-progress piece: a systematization of the measurement of legal compliance-helping researchers produce measurements that are compelling, ethical, and legally robust.