The Internet with Privacy Policies: Measuring The Web Upon Consent

To protect user privacy, legislators have regulated the use of tracking technologies, mandating the acquisition of users' consent before collecting data. As a result, websites started showing more and more consent management modules -- i.e., Consent Banners -- the visitors have to interact with to access the website content. Since these banners change the content the browser loads, they challenge web measurement collection, primarily to monitor the extent of tracking technologies, but also to measure web performance. If not correctly handled, Consent Banners prevent crawlers from observing the actual content of the websites. In this paper, we present a comprehensive measurement campaign focusing on popular websites in Europe and the US, visiting both landing and internal pages from different countries around the world. We engineer \TOOL, a Web crawler able to accept the Consent Banners, as most users would do in practice. It lets us compare how webpages change before and after accepting such policies, if present. Our results show that all measurements performed ignoring the Consent Banners offer a biased and partial view of the Web. After accepting the privacy policies, web tracking is far more pervasive, webpages are larger and slower to load

The impact of cookie notices in consumer´s trust in news media websites

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Marketing IntelligenceWith the GDPR, websites need permission from their users, to gather and use the information about them that is collected, so nowadays, when someone wants to access a new website, they encounter cookie notices asking if they accept the access and use of their information that is collected by the cookies in the sites. According to previous studies, news reading has become one of the most popular activities when surfacing the internet, and news websites are the ones with the highest number of third-party cookies and the type of site that provides more cookie notices. The goal of this research is to study the impact of cookie notices in the consumer's trust news media websites. To achieve this goal, a questionnaire was conducted and the results supported the hypothesis that most people knows what cookies are and the purposes they serve, and when it comes to cookie notices, users not only prefer when they are given not only the options to accept or decline, but also to select the purposes and the partners they wish to give permission, but also that the notices that provides them with multiple option given them a bigger sense of trust and safety. It was also found that when people have the knowledge that these requirements are not being fulfilled, it leads not only to disappointment and insecurity towards the websites, but also leads to distrust the news media websites and damage the credibility of the information and content that they provide

The Impact of Privacy Laws on Online User Behavior

Policymakers worldwide draft privacy laws that require trading-off between safeguarding consumer privacy and preventing economic loss to companies that use consumer data. However, little empirical knowledge exists as to how privacy laws affect companies' performance. Accordingly, this paper empirically quantifies the effects of the enforcement of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on online user behavior over time, analyzing data from 6,286 websites spanning 24 industries during the 10 months before and 18 months after the GDPR's enforcement in 2018. A panel differences estimator, with a synthetic control group approach, isolates the short- and long-term effects of the GDPR on user behavior. The results show that, on average, the GDPR's effects on user quantity and usage intensity are negative; e.g., the numbers of total visits to a website decrease by 4.9% and 10% due to GDPR in respectively the short- and long-term. These effects could translate into average revenue losses of $7 million for e-commerce websites and almost$2.5 million for ad-based websites 18 months after GDPR. The GDPR's effects vary across websites, with some industries even benefiting from it; moreover, more-popular websites suffer less, suggesting that the GDPR increased market concentration

Tracking Third-Party Cookies - an empirical analysis of the current situation

Through the act of browsing, “users,” or the individuals who participate in internet searches, develop their digital footprint cookies. Essentially, cookies are trackers stored on a user’s computer by a website or application. The trackers collect data that provides users with a more relevant internet experience. While cookies have proven to enhance user experiences on the internet, they also encompass a range of concerns over privacy and user safety. Notably, the way cookies both store and track PII (Personal Identifiable Information) without user’s consent is a significant concern. When users enter a webpage, there is an options box that prompts them to accept or reject cookies. It is unclear how transparent this process actually is, as these sites may still store user’s personal information, even after they have elected to “reject” cookies. Discussion: Therefore, the primary aim of this thesis is to understand how cookies affect the user and determine what kind of technologies or strategies can be implemented to ensure the user has a better network experience while guaranteeing that their information is secure. This will be done by researching existing published research on various aspects of cookies to understand how cookies are typically used. The detail of the methodology is discussed on page 14. Conclusion: Ultimately, it is essential that users know how to utilize cookies sensibly, it is vital to share the user’s cookie policy and protect privacy as much as possible. The main finding was that there was a gap in existing research as no articles tried to discover which 2 main sets of regulations, in the EU or US, was being implemented more successfully. The information required to do this simple analysis, such as the regional location of a site and user, is typically available but was not published in the research material

GDPR:n vaikutukset käyttäjien seurannan toteuttamiseen evästeillä

Tiivistelmä. Tässä työssä tutkittiin kirjallisuuskatsauksen muodossa, miten GDPR on vaikuttanut käyttäjien seurannan toteuttamiseen evästeillä. GDPR on vaikuttanut internetsivuihin keväästä 2018 lähtien, joten aiheesta löytyi tutkimusta lähinnä vuodesta 2019 lähtien. Tutkimuksessa havaittiin, että käyttäjien seurannan toteuttaminen on muuttunut GDPR:n käyttöönoton jälkeen, mutta se ei ole vähentynyt merkittävästi. Muutokset ovat kohdistuneet lähinnä evästekyselyihin. Tutkimuksessa havaittiin myös, että aihetta on tutkittu enimmäkseen lain kirjaimen noudattamisen näkökulmasta. Uusimmissa tutkimuksissa on kuitenkin tutkittu myös asiaan liittyviä seurannaisvaikutuksia, ja näin ollen tutkimuksen näkökulma näyttäisi olevan siirtymässä siihen, mitä hyötyä hyvästä tietosuojasta voisi olla