Doctoral meeting: 'Testing the private mode of web browsers. Are you sure it is private?'

The web browser has become a basic tool in our daily lives, both professionally and privately. It is a tool that we use constantly and has access to a lot of sensitive information. Having access to a person's browsing history or search history allows us to quickly find out what that person is like, their preferences, opinions, hobbies, habits... The fact that a single tool has access to so many areas of our lives makes users demand a higher level of privacy and control. A clear example is the introduction of the private mode that can be found in most current browsers.

With the aim of testing how well the private mode does its job, we have designed a methodology that puts it to the test in different scenarios. Our intention is to try to recover as much information as possible from the hard disk and RAM about the browsing performed in private mode. As an example, the results of applying the methodology to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers will be presented.

Supervisors: Tomás Fernández Pena and José Carlos Cabaleiro