"Your Personal Data Is Political: W&M Computer Scientists Find Gaps in the Privacy Practices of Campaign Websites"
A new study by William & Mary (W&M), Google, and IBM researchers examined 2,060 House, Senate, and presidential campaigns from the 2020 US election cycle, marking the first large-scale analysis of political campaign websites' privacy practices. According to the study, those campaigns often retained private data for an unspecified time, provided incomplete or no privacy disclosures, and were likely to share or sell data. The study discovered that highly private data was often collected with contact information, thus enabling campaigns to establish user profiles without the user's explicit consent. The often undisclosed tracker use provided campaigns with access to users' browsing habits, exposing them to microtargeted political ads described as manipulative and a potential threat to democracy. This article continues to discuss the study "Understanding the Privacy Practices of Political Campaigns: A Perspective from the 2020 US Election Websites."
Submitted by grigby1