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Record W3124741865 · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.13405

Improving Privacy Protection in the area of Behavioural Targeting

2025· preprint· en· W3124741865 on OpenAlexfundno aff
Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius

Bibliographic record

VenueArXiv.org · 2025
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicPrivacy, Security, and Data Protection
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersAmsterdams UniversiteitsfondsYork University
KeywordsData Protection Act 1998DirectiveEmpowermentInternet privacyData Protection DirectiveInformation privacyPrivacy by DesignPrivacy policyPolitical scienceInformation privacy lawPrivacy lawBusinessEuropean unionLawEuropean Union lawComputer science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This PhD thesis discusses how European law could improve privacy protection in the area of behavioural targeting. Behavioural targeting, also referred to as online profiling, involves monitoring people's online behaviour, and using the collected information to show people individually targeted advertisements. To protect privacy in the area of behavioural targeting, the EU lawmaker mainly relies on the consent requirement for the use of tracking technologies in the e-Privacy Directive, and on general data protection law. With informed consent requirements, the law aims to empower people to make choices in their best interests. But behavioural studies cast doubt on the effectiveness of the empowerment approach as a privacy protection measure. Many people click "I agree" to any statement that is presented to them. Therefore, to mitigate privacy problems such as chilling effects, this study argues for a combined approach of protecting and empowering the individual. Compared to the current approach, the lawmaker should focus more on protecting people. The PhD thesis is a legal study, but it also incorporates insights from other disciplines, such as computer science, behavioural economics, and media studies. This study is among the first to discuss the implications of behavioural research for European data protection policy. The topic of whether data protection law should apply to pseudonymous data is discussed in depth. The study contains a detailed analysis of the role of informed consent in data protection law, and gives much attention to the tension between protecting and empowering the individual within data protection law.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.055
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.110
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.055
Threshold uncertainty score0.290

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0550.110
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.002
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0050.012
Scholarly communication0.0120.018
Open science0.0030.011
Research integrity0.0080.008
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0120.003

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.100
GPT teacher head0.319
Teacher spread0.219 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations22
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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