User Privacy and the Evolution of Third-Party Tracking Mechanisms on the WWW
Third-party tracking refers to the collection of user data by domains other than those that a user has requested. Advertisers and other interested third parties use increasingly sophisticated web technologies to gather data about browsing behavior. This work was submitted as an honors thesis to the Stanford University Department of Computer Science.

The Center for Democracy and Technology hosts HTML versions of the component chapters.


Equilibrium Analysis of Generalized Penny Auctions
Penny auction websites such as Swoopo.com and Quibids.com are growing rapidly in number and popularity. Modeling penny auctions as multi-player, mixed-strategy games illuminates the mechanisms at work in these auctions. The paper characterizes the most profitable pricing schemes for auctioneers and the best strategies for bidders.


Term-Rewriting in STP
Electronic voting schemes that rely on digital signatures require a method for verifying cryptographic routines. The STP software implements a term-rewriter that speedily evaluates the equivalence of logical statements by applying logical and arithmetic rules in an algorithmically efficient way.