Measuring the blocking of AN.ON users by popular websites through web scraping

Measuring the blocking of AN.ON users by popular websites through web scraping

Mulder, Jurgen (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Roos, S. (mentor)
Spinellis, D. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology
Distributed Systems

Computer Science and Engineering

CSE3000 Research Project

2021-07-02

Users of anonymity networks face differential treatment and sometimes get blocked by websites, it is currently unclear how common this blocking is. This research aims to provide an overview of how common this blocking is while utilizing the AN.ON anonymity network. The analysis is accomplished by utilizing automated web scraping and processing to recognise and classify blocks by comparing them to a control connection. This process and software can be used and extended to analyze and compare any two connections. The scope is limited to the one thousand most popular websites according to the Alexa rating. Different kinds of blocks were identified and automatically recognised in processing, though manual verification is still required. Evidence is found and presented that there is a significant amount of blocking, occurring on approximately 23% of the analyzed domains. There is also a significant difference in blocking between using different cascades.

Measurement Technique
Crawling
Anonymity Networks
Network Observation
Websites
Internet Measurement
AN.ON

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:77347e34-f038-429c-a710-5e2f444298b2

Student theses

bachelor thesis

© 2021 Jurgen Mulder