Topics Analysis: Privacy and Utility Goals

This repository contains the source code used in our privacy and utility analysis of the Topics API for the Web from the Privacy Sandbox.

Topics API for the Web

With the Topics API for the Web, Google aims to replace third-party cookies for personalized advertising. Find more details about our analysis in our paper Interest-disclosing Mechanisms for Advertising are Privacy-Exposing (not Preserving):

@inproceedings{topicsweb24_beugin,
      title={Interest-disclosing Mechanisms for Advertising are Privacy-Exposing (not Preserving)},
      author={Yohan Beugin and Patrick McDaniel},
      booktitle={Proceedings on {Privacy} {Enhancing} {Technologies} {Symposium} ({PETS})},
      year={2024},
      month={july},
}

---

Getting Started

1. Clone this topics_analysis repository and the sandbox_dependencies submodule at once with:
   • git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:yohhaan/topics_analysis.git (SSH)
   • git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/yohhaan/topics_analysis.git (HTTPS)

A Dockerfile is provided under .devcontainer/ (for direct integration with VS Code). To manually build the image and deploy the Docker container, follow the instructions below:

Requirement: Docker

2. Build the Docker image:

docker build -t topics_analysis .devcontainer/

3. Deploy a Docker container:

docker run --rm -it -v ${PWD}:/workspaces/topics_analysis \
    -w /workspaces/topics_analysis \
    --entrypoint bash topics_analysis:latest

Note: some commands to reproduce our results may take a long time to execute depending on the amount of resources of your machine. We recommend running the above command to deploy a Docker container in a screen session that you can then detach and attach to your terminal as needed.

4. Fetch the required Privacy Sandbox dependencies:

cd sandbox_dependencies
./fetch_all.sh
cd ..

Reproduction Steps

Refer to the instructions provided in petsymposium-artifact2024.1/template.md to reproduce our analysis of the Topics API for the Web.