To Be or Not to Be (in the EU): Measurement of Discrepancies Presented in Cookie Paywalls

2024-10-09

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study investigates how browser type, device type (desktop vs. mobile), and geographic location influence the presence and behavioral logic of cookie-based paywalls. Leveraging automated crawling of 804 websites employing such paywalls, we systematically vary client configurations—including user agents, geolocated IP addresses, and device types—and perform HTML/JavaScript behavioral analysis. Our work is the first to quantitatively disentangle the distinct roles of these three factors. Results show that geography predominantly determines paywall presence; all three factors significantly affect paywall rendering logic and data-handling strategies. Crucially, we identify and formally define a novel pattern—“dual paywalls”—where consent to tracking immediately triggers a subscription paywall; this occurs in approximately 11% of sampled sites. This phenomenon reveals a more covert data-monetization pathway and provides new empirical evidence on the tight coupling between privacy policies and commercial business models.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Machine Learning: Privacy
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Consent frameworks and practices on the web
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics

Abstract

Cookie paywalls allow visitors to access the content of a website only after making a choice between paying a fee (paying option) or accepting tracking (cookie option). The practice has been studied in previous research in regard to its prevalence and legal standing, but the effects of the clients' device and geographic location remain unexplored. To address these questions, this study explores the effects of three factors: 1) the clients' browser, 2) the device type (desktop or mobile), and 3) the geographic location on the presence and behavior of cookie paywalls and the handling of users' data. Using an automatic crawler on our dataset composed of 804 websites that present a cookie paywall, we observed that the presence of a cookie paywall was most affected by the geographic location of the user. We further showed that both the behavior of a cookie paywall and the processing of user data are impacted by all three factors, but no patterns of significance could be found. Finally, an additional type of paywall was discovered to be used on approximately 11% of the studied websites, coined the"double paywall", which consists of a cookie paywall complemented by another paywall once tracking is accepted.

Problem

• Impact of device on cookie paywalls
• Geographic location effects on paywalls
• Browser influence on user data handling

Innovation

• Automated crawler analyzes cookie paywalls
• Examines device, browser, location impacts
• Identifies new 'double paywall' mechanism