A Study on Subject Data Access in Online Advertising after the GDPR - Prof. Dr. Norbert Pohlmann

M. Degeling, T. Holz, N. Pohlmann, D. Tatang, T. Urban:
„A Study on Subject Data Access in Online Advertising after the GDPR”.
In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Data Privacy Management – DPM’19

Online tracking has mostly been studied by passively measuring the presence of tracking services on websites (i) without knowing what data these services collect, (ii) the reasons for which specific purposes it is collected, (iii) or if the used practices are disclosed in privacy policies. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 25, 2018 and introduced new rights for usersto access data collected about them. In this paper, we evaluate how companies respond tosubject access requests and portability to learn more about the data collected by tracking services. More specifically, we exercised our right to access with 38 companies that had tracked us online. We observe stark differences between the way requests are handled and what data is disclosed: Only 21 outof 38 companies we inquired (55 %) disclosed information within the re-quired time and only 13 (34 %) companies were able to send us a copy of the data in time. Our work has implications regarding the implementation of privacy law as well as what online tracking companies should do to be more compliant with the new regulation.

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More information on the subject “Towards Understanding the Impact of the GDPR on Online Advertisement”:

Articles:

“Beyond the Front Page: Measuring Third Party Dynamics in the Field”

“Measuring the Impact of the GDPR on Data Sharing in Ad Networks”

“Your Hashed IP Address: Ubuntu”

“A Study on Subject Data Access in Online Advertising after the GDPR”

“Analyzing Leakage of Personal Information by Malware”

“The Unwanted Sharing Economy: An Analysis of Cookie Syncing and User Transparency under GDPR”

“Towards Understanding Privacy Implications of Adware and Potentially Unwanted Programs”