Computer Sciences and Information Technology
Title : | Understanding and Ensuring the Privacy of User Data |
Area of research : | Computer Sciences and Information Technology |
Principal Investigator : | Dr. Abhishek Bichhawat, Indian Institute Of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, Gujarat |
Timeline Start Year : | 2023 |
Timeline End Year : | 2025 |
Contact info : | abhishekbichhawat@gmail.com |
Equipments : | Workstation |
Details
Executive Summary : | The Indian government is considering the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill to protect users' data privacy, but privacy considerations have often been ignored. This project aims to address privacy leaks through cookies and other storage mechanisms and study the privacy compatibility of websites for the Indian audience with the features listed in the bill. Methods, tools, and techniques will be developed to identify violations of privacy regulations and protect user information stored in browsers from being modified by arbitrary scripts. The project proposes conducting a study of different websites accessed by the Indian audience and the prevalence of privacy measures on these websites. A custom crawler will be developed to check for identified features using CSS elements and JavaScript code, and analyze collected data to verify compliance with the DPDP regulations. The tool will also mine texts and buttons used in consent banners.
The researchers aim to understand how easily a user can access cookie settings to modify their choices and how they are hidden on the web page. They will also study differences in privacy options and preferences offered by websites, such as the GDPR in the EU and those in India. The results may support the need for legislation to ensure user privacy. The project will scrape/crawl websites using a VPN and crawl the respective counterparts in the Indian ecosystem, identifying functional differences between the two versions of the websites. Modifications to the crawler will be needed to download the websites via a VPN and generate differences between the two versions, especially regarding privacy settings. Finally, a least-privilege access model for cookies and persistent storage mechanisms in web browsers will be designed. |
Total Budget (INR): | 14,65,370 |
Organizations involved