"CyLab Members Present Research at Annual FTC PrivacyCon"

Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) CyLab Security and Privacy Institute faculty, postdocs, and students presented their research at the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) seventh annual PrivacyCon on November 1. The event gathered various stakeholders, including industry representatives, consumer advocates, government regulators, and academics, to discuss the latest consumer privacy and data security trends and research. Consumer surveillance, automated decision-making systems, children's privacy, Internet of Things (IoT) device privacy, augmented and virtual reality, dark patterns, and advertisement technology were among the topics covered by presentations and panel discussions. One of the studies presented at the event titled, "Does Privacy Regulation Harm Content Providers? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of the GDPR," demonstrates evidence of websites' reactions to the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in both the US and the EU, such as an initial decrease in the number of third-party cookies and the intensity of visitor tracking. According to the study, reactions differ between EU and US websites, as tracking among EU websites bounced back several months after the regulation was enacted. The findings show a slight decrease in average page views per visitor on EU websites relative to US websites near the end of the study's observation period in November 2019, but no significant impact of the regulation on EU websites' delivery of new content, social media engagement with new content, and ranking in both the short and long term. Researchers also discovered no evidence of differences in survival between EU and US content providers. Although the industry predicted serious consequences for content providers as a result of the GDPR, the authors of the paper discovered that websites that responded more strongly to the GDPR were less likely to be impacted by such a response. In comparison, websites that rely heavily on EU visitors found ways to avoid being negatively impacted by the regulation over time. This article continues to discuss the studies presented by CyLab members during FTC's seventh annual PrivacyCon. 

CyLab reports "CyLab Members Present Research at Annual FTC PrivacyCon"