RegTrack: Uncovering Global Disparities in Third-party Advertising and Tracking

2026-03-03

AI Summary

This study systematically quantifies the independent and interactive effects of browser choice, user geographic location, and website hosting jurisdiction on exposure to third-party advertising and tracking. Conducting synchronized crawls of 743 popular websites across eight geographic nodes using four browsers under two consent states, the research combines third-party tracking domain identification with classification. Findings reveal that privacy-focused browsers reduce tracking domains by up to 30% in regions with lax regulation, while in GDPR-governed areas, tracking requests decline by 80%, with 89–91% of such requests remaining within the European Economic Area. Notably, user location exerts a significantly stronger influence on tracking exposure than website hosting jurisdiction, highlighting the practical limits of user agency in mitigating privacy risks.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Mobility, Driving & Flight
• Machine Learning: Privacy
• Computer Vision: Bias, Fairness & Privacy

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Consent frameworks and practices on the web
• Security and Privacy: Tracking, profiling, and countermeasures against them
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Topic discovery and tracking

Abstract

Third party advertising and tracking (A&T) are pervasive across the web, yet user exposure varies significantly with browser choice, browsing location, and hosting jurisdiction. We systematically study how these three factors shape tracking by conducting synchronized crawls of 743 popular websites from 8 geographic vantage points using 4 browsers and 2 consent states. Our analysis reveals that browser choice, user location, and hosting jurisdiction each shape tracking exposure in distinct ways. Privacy focused browsers block more third party trackers, reducing observed A&T domains by up to 30% in permissive regulatory environments, but offer smaller relative gains in stricter regions. User location influences the tracking volume, the prevalence of consent banners, and the extent of cross border tracking: GDPR regulated locations exhibit about 80% fewer third party A&T domains before consent and keep 89-91% of A&T requests within the EEA or adequacy countries. Hosting jurisdiction plays a smaller role; tracking exposure varies most strongly with inferred user location rather than where sites are hosted. These findings underscore both the power and limitations of user agency, informing the design of privacy tools, regulatory enforcement strategies, and future measurement methodologies.

Problem

• third-party tracking
• advertising
• global disparities
• user location
• browser choice

Innovation

• third-party tracking
• browser choice
• geolocation
• GDPR
• synchronized web crawling