A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
From Bytes to Booth: Exploring Privacy Concerns in Voting Advice Applications
Authors: Rauti, Sampsa; Heino, Timi; Puhtila, Panu
Editors: Emrouznejad, Ali; Yue, Yong; Jiang, Hongbo; Xu, Zeshui
Conference name: International Conference on Computer Science and Application Engineering
Publisher: ACM
Publication year: 2025
Book title : CSAE '24: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Application Engineering
Journal name in source: 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Application Engineering, CSAE 2024
First page : 125
Last page: 129
ISBN: 979-8-4007-1809-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3704814.3705969
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1145/3704814.3705969
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/491491433
In this study, we conduct a network traffic analysis of Finnish voting advice applications. We analyze the potential third-party data leaks in 8 voting advice applications first during the 2023 parliamentary election and then during the 2024 presidential election. The goal is to study whether sensitive information, such as individuals’ political opinions, leak to third parties. Furthermore, the paper also describes the change in privacy of voting advice applications after the leaks found in 2023 were covered in the media. The findings indicate that media attention and public discourse has had a clear positive impact on the privacy of Finnish voting advice applications, but a few data leaks and privacy concerns still remain. We conclude by discussing how to protect political opinions and democratic processes in increasingly digital society.
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.
