Enhancing user awareness during internet browsing

With the advent of e-commerce and social networks, people often unconsciously disseminate their sensitive data through different platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. In this scenario, it would be useful to support users with tools providing awareness on how their sensitive data are exchanged. In this paper, we present a visual analytics tool that allows users to understand how their sensitive data are exchanged or shared among different network services. In particular, the proposed tool visualizes the communication flow generated during Web browsing activities, highlighting the providers tracking their data. The tool provides a real-time summary graph showing the information acquired from the network. A user study is presented to highlight how the proposed tool improves the user’s perception of privacy issues.