Most Web sites have a strong interest in identifying visitors in order to link recurring visits, a process called Web Tracking. This is used for different purposes, typically customized advertisements or product recommendations. From the user's point of view, tracking is sometimes useful, but mostly it is a threat to the user's privacy. A common means to identify visitors are browser cookies, but they are by far not the only ones. Properties like browser version, operating system, screen resolution and even installed fonts can be read by Web sites and (mis)used for Web tracking.
The task of this thesis is to analyze the most common methods used in Web tracking as well as the state of the art in protecting from Web tracking in theory and practice (e.g. Firefox, Disconnect, Ghostery). Further, a unified protecting framework shall be developed, implemented and evaluated.