Top U.S. Websites Share Visitor Personal Data [telecom]

Privacy Study: Top U.S. Websites Share Visitor Personal Data

By Julia Angwin October 11, 2011

NOTE: This post has been updated to include clarifications that were made to the original study.

A study released Tuesday shows that 45% of the top 185 U.S. websites transmit identifying details about their visitors to at least four outside websites.

The data transmitted was primarily a "username" - which is the name a person uses to log into a website - or a user ID assigned by the website to a user. It was usually transmitted through referrers - which is information about the web page transmitted automatically.

In some cases, the data went much further: the study found for instance that the online dating website OKCupid sent the gender, age, [and] zip code to two companies that sell personal data in auctions, BlueKai and Lotame. Lotame also received data about 'relationship status' and 'drug use frequency.'

Lotame confirmed that it has a data licensing relationship with OKCupid, but said it does not use data in the "drug use category." BlueKai told Digits that it does not buy or sell data attributes like "drug use frequency" from OKCupid. "We do capture standard demographic attributes like zip, age and gender from several publishers," a BlueKai spokesperson said.

It's not clear how many companies that received the data used the identifying information. But researcher Jonathan Mayer, a PhD student at Stanford University's computer security lab, said that the study proved that online tracking is not anonymous.

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