Know Privacy

Know Privacy ist ein gemeinsames Projekt von Joshua Gomez, Travis Pinnick und Ashkan Soltani im Rahmen ihres Masters program an der UC Berkeley School of Information. Im Rahmen der Erstellung des Know Privacy Reports analysierte man das Tracking-Verhalten von 50 Top-Webseites, inklusive ihrer Datenschutzbestimmungen und der Nutzung von Google. 92% der untersuchten Webseiten nutzen Google Analytics oder Adsense. Oftmals wird darüber informiert, dass erhobene Daten auch mit Affiliates ausgetauscht werden. Keine der angeschriebenen Webseitenw ar aber bereit, detailliertere Informationen zu schicken. Es werden auch Empfehlungen gegeben, was man politisch machen köntne, um digitale Verbraucherrechte zu stärken. Hab mir noch nicht den ganzen 44-seitigen Report durchgelesen, das Ergebnis klingt aber interessant.

Our survey of privacy policies revealed that most of the top 50 websites domains collect information about users and use it for customized advertising. Beyond that, however, most contained unclear statements (or lacked any statement) about data retention, purchase of data about users from other sources, or the fate of user data in the event of a company merger or bankruptcy. Sharing of information presents particular problems. While most policies stated that information would not be shared with third parties, many of these sites allowed third-party tracking through web bugs. We believe that this practice contravenes users‘ expectations; it makes little sense to disclaim formal information sharing, but allow functionally equivalent tracking with third parties. Most policies also stated that information could be shared with affiliates. Thus, we requested lists of affiliates with whom data are shared from website operators, but received none. To get a general impression of the number of companies each website in the top 50 could potentially share data with under their current privacy policies, we looked up the parent company of each website and the list of subsidiaries those companies own. The average number of subsidiaries was 297, with a median of 93. This is a second key disconnect between user expectations and website practices. Users do not know and cannot learn the full range of affiliates with which websites may share information.

Hier ist der ganze Report.