NetSE: Medium: Collaborative Research: Auditing Internet Content for Credibility, Fairness, and Privacy

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

Millions of users are accessing a portion of billions of Web pages and other content on the Internet on a daily basis. While the networking research community and the public in general are well-aware of the net neutrality problem, i.e., how to develop regulatory policies and auditing mechanisms to prevent Internet Service Providers from discriminating against various applications, very little effort is invested in enabling content neutrality. In particular, it is not a secret that almost every browsing click we make is collected by either Web- or ISP-based 'information collectors and aggregators', and that our profiles are used for online advertising. Still, no public auditing mechanisms, capable of detecting and informing end users about such practices, exist in this emerging area. Take search engines as another example. How does one know that information available on these services is not biased (or will become biased in the future) for commercial, political, or any other reason? More generally, no public auditing systems are capable of monitoring the scope and effectiveness of advertising or spam campaigns on the Internet. The PIs argue that all these questions fundamentally affect fairness at all levels, information credibility, and user privacy, all of which have significant relevance for the future development of the Internet and beyond. The PIs will build a set of methodologies and tools unified in a system capable of (i) enabling auditing mechanisms for the Web advertising domain, (ii) monitoring search engines? services and revealing their neutrality, and (iii) independently determining a Web site's popularity and checking for the truthfulness of advertised popularity. Further, the PIs plan to deploy the developed system on the PlanetLab wide area network testbed to perform long term monitoring of content neutrality in the Internet. Broader Impact: By informing the public of how online advertisers and search engines behave, the auditing system will enable fair competition and preclude monopolies, oligopolies, or collusions, eventually helping to improve online information credibility and user privacy. Even if no bias nor privacy-violating practices were to exist in today's Internet (unfortunately, the PI's preliminary results show that this is not the case), the auditing system and methodologies will always be a barrier for anyone who would believe that applying such approaches might be done without public knowledge and repercussions. By exposing biased content behavior, the auditing system will be capable of revealing discriminating acts that can happen for commercial, social, political, religious, or any other reason, ultimately facilitating the development of free and open society. The PIs will design and disseminate easy-to-use browser extensions and plug-ins that will be capable of assisting end users in detecting content neutrality violations. Education is an integral part of this award. The insights and tools derived from this project will be integrated into the current undergraduate and graduate curricula.