Increase in the Prevalence of Online Pornography Use: Objective Data Analysis from the Period Between 2004 and 2016 in Poland

Despite the considerable amount of attention presently devoted to the high accessibility of online pornography, very little formal analyses have been carried out to show how the advent and proliferation of Internet technology has changed the prevalence of pornography use in populations. We conducted a preliminary analysis based on objective website traffic data, representing the changes in the number of (1) Internet users generally and (2) online pornography users specifically, between 2004 and 2016 in Poland. We observed a clear increase in the estimated number of people using online pornography in the analyzed period. The estimated number of general population members viewing pornography on the Internet increased over three times (310%) between October 2004 and October 2016–starting from an estimated 2.76 million in the first period to 8.54 million in the last. At the same time, we did not observe a clear increase in the percentage of Internet users who viewed online pornography in the same time period. Additionally, pornography viewership on the Internet was almost 2 times more prevalent among male (47%) than female Internet users (27%), and most popular in the 18–27 age group. Since our analysis is based on objective data, it does not share the limitations inherent in self-reports. However, our approach also has several important limitations (e.g., the analysis does not include online activity generated on mobile devices and under a private browsing mode); thus, the results should be interpreted with caution.

Awareness, Adoption, and Misconceptions of Web Privacy Tools

Privacy and security tools can help users protect themselves online. Unfortunately, people are often unaware of such tools, and have potentially harmful misconceptions about the protections provided by the tools they know about. Effectively encouraging the adoption of privacy tools requires insights into people’s tool awareness and understanding. Towards that end, we conducted a demographically-stratified survey of 500 US participants to measure their use of and perceptions about five web browsing-related tools: private browsing, VPNs, Tor Browser, ad blockers, and antivirus software. We asked about participants’ perceptions of the protections provided by these tools across twelve realistic scenarios. Our thematic analysis of participants’ responses revealed diverse forms of misconceptions. Some types of misconceptions were common across tools and scenarios, while others were associated with particular combinations of tools and scenarios. For example, some participants suggested that the privacy protections offered by private browsing, VPNs, and Tor Browser would also protect them from security threats – a misconception that might expose them to preventable risks. We anticipate that our findings will help researchers, tool designers, and privacy advocates educate the public about privacy- and security-enhancing technologies.

Forensic analysis of private browsing mechanisms: Tracing internet activities

Forensic analysts are more than ever facing challenges upon conducting their deep investigative analysis on digital devices due to the technological progression. Of these are the difficulties present upon analyzing web browser artefacts as this became more complicated when web browser companies introduced private browsing mode, a feature aiming to protect users’ data upon opening a private browsing session, by leaving no traces of data on the local device used. Aiming to investigate whether the claims of web browser companies are true concerning the protection private browsing provides to the users and whether it really doesn’t leave any browsing data behind, the most popular desktop browsers in Windows were analyzed after surfing them regularly and privately. The results shown in this paper suggest that the privacy provided varies among different companies since evidence might be recovered from some of the browsers but not from others.

Private Browsing Forensic Analysis: A Case Study of Privacy Preservation in the Brave Browser

The Internet and its users are in continual growth. With it grows the number of organized crimes on the Internet and the potential for individuals to carry out illegal activities. These criminals have gained more awareness of private browsing facilities, and many have found a haven in privacy designed browsers that cover up their tracks and shield their nefarious actions. The development of these privacy features has proven to be a challenge for digital forensic investigators. They strive to perform a thorough analysis of web browsers to collect artefacts relating to illegal activity to be presented as evidence to the court of law and used to convict criminals. “Brave” browser is one of the most recent and fastest-growing private browsers that, up to this point, has not been studied in-depth, and its privacy preservation functionality remains unclear. In this paper, we studied Brave’s private browsing mode, examined its privacy-preserving and forensic data acquisition, and outlined the location and type of evidence available through live and post-mortem state analysis. The unique approach taken included a set of experiments that unveiled how the browser functions and showed the appropriate tools that could be utilized to extract leftover artefacts. Analysis of our results showed that despite Brave leaving no traces of browsing activity on the Hard Disk, visited URLs, images, keyword searches, and even cached videos were retrievable from the RAM, which shows that Brave is not entirely private.

Secure user Browser Activity using Hybrid Data Hiding Techniques

Web browsers may delete some files but it doesn’t delete everything. The purpose of private browsing is for users to browse private mode just as a standard browsing session would, but without storing any data such as log-in credentials or browsing history upon exit. A secure framework to secure the web browser artefacts is proposed to fulfil the requirements. In order to compare and contrast the different methods of artefacts encryption, a hybrid method was introduced; Base64 + AES on the prototype. The test systems were created by utilising virtual machines. The prototype was developed using C# language in Microsoft Visual Studio application that runs on Windows. To provide countermeasures, this research proposes an implementation of a third-party privacy application, called PRINDOW, to improve security in hiding a user's browsing activity. Every browsing session is recorded and scanned using the prototype. This method allows only the base requirements to be installed on the virtual machine for each file with the cryptographic method. This framework could theoretically enhance current practises by making slight changes to the web browser's application structure.

Web Browser Artefacts using Cryptographic Examination

Private browsers, in general, offer security and privacy by allowing users to browse the web without leaving usual traces on their computers. However, private browsing has been proven not to deliver the security as they ensure they would. Previous researchers concluded that web browsers often failed to provide the intended privacy protection to their users. Even with third-party PC cleaning tools, web browser data can still be accessed using computer forensic tools. This paper aims to perform research and development of a framework with the help of cryptography that will support high accessibility of evidence until the evidence should be erased, at a point where it will be impossible to recover. Cryptography consolidates innumerable algorithms which are used in building a secured application. This application mainly focusses on the implementation of a system capable of encrypting of browser artefacts using encryption techniques. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is one of the best-known and most robust symmetric encryption algorithms. The AES rule is capable of using 128, 192, and 256 bits of cryptographic keys. The proposed system makes use of the advantages of both the methods by presenting a hybrid technique of encoding and encryption, resulting in a much secured and faster alternative of storing web browser artefacts. Regardless of whether the attacker gets access to any of the keys, the attacker won’t be in position to unmask the data in an expected certain amount of time. This system will hopefully contribute to a better web browser over the existing techniques by doing some minor changes in the implementation framework.