A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Analysis of Third-Party Data Leaks on Finnish Mental Health Websites
Authors: Rauti, Sampsa; Vuorinen, Esko; Puhtila, Panu; Carlsson, Robin
Editors: Skala, Karolj
Conference name: ICT and Electronics Convention
Publication year: 2024
Journal: International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics
Book title : 2024 47th MIPRO ICT and Electronics Convention (MIPRO) : Proceedings
eISBN: 979-8-3503-8250-1
eISSN: 2623-8764
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MIPRO60963.2024.10569215
Web address : https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10569215
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/457104672
Mental health websites process private and sensitive personal data, and it is essential to prevent this confidential data from being compromised. However, the increasing practice of using various third-party services on modern websites poses a threat to online privacy, including online services focusing on mental well-being. We present a study on the privacy of 10 Finnish mental health websites and conduct a network traffic analysis to see whether these online services inadvertently share sensitive data with third-party entities. Our findings indicate all of the studied websites leak sensitive contextual data (such as the visited URLs) to third parties. The current paper analyzes the characteristics of these data leaks, and gives suggestions to avoid such privacy concerns in future.
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |  |
Funding information in the publication:
This research has been funded by Academy of Finland project 327397, IDA – Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture.
