A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Third-Party Data Leaks on Municipal Websites
Authors: Rauti, Sampsa; Carlsson, Robin; Puhtila, Panu; Leppänen, Ville
Editors: Yang, Xin-She; Sherratt, Simon; Dey, Nilanjan; Joshi, Amit
Conference name: International Congress on Information and Communication Technology
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Lecture notes in networks and systems
Book title : Proceedings of Ninth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology, ICICT 2024, London, Volume 5
Journal name in source: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems
Volume: 1000
First page : 599
Last page: 610
ISBN: 978-981-97-3288-3
eISBN: 978-981-97-3289-0
ISSN: 2367-3370
eISSN: 2367-3389
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3289-0_48
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3289-0_48
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/457651043
This paper addresses the use of third-party services on public sector websites. We focus on Finnish municipalities and their use of third-party services, analyzing network traffic from 309 municipal websites to explore what kind of personal data is transmitted to third parties. Our findings show that 51.8% of municipal websites reveal the pages visited by the user to third parties without consent. This way, sensitive data such as search terms used by website visitors can be leaked to third parties. The paper also offers recommendations to improve privacy on public sector websites. We have also contacted the municipalities with serious data leaks and recommended privacy improvements by disabling or replacing problematic third-party services.
Funding information in the publication:
This research has been funded by Academy of Finland project 327397, IDA—Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture.
