- G20 governmental websites create cookies from third-party trackers.
- Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Russia lead the ranking with almost 100%.
- There are also persistent cookies that are created by trackers lasting for days or months.
An international group including researchers from IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks participated in a study that disclosed a worrisome result about user privacy on the internet. The research shows that up to 90% of government websites use cookies from third-party trackers.
Cookies from third-party trackers
The group studied popular governmental websites across different countries and estimated to what degree the visits to these sites are tracked by third parties. Unfortunately, the results show that tracking is a serious concern. In some countries, up to 90% of these websites generate cookies from third-party trackers without any consent from users.
There are also persistent cookies that are created by trackers lasting for days or months. Such cookies are present even in countries with strict user privacy laws. The majority of the G20 countries’ official websites indeed use cookies ranging from 77% to 100% of their government websites, at least one cookie without the user’s consent. Japan is the country with the lowest percentage of websites with those cookies at 77.2%. Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Russia lead the ranking on the top, with almost 100%.
Most cookies set by third-party trackers last for a month or more. The long-lasting cookies allow trackers to gather much more data about website visitors. Most of these trackers exist due to many of the government sites are including links to social networks and hosting their videos on Youtube or Vimeo. Another cause for the high presence of trackers might be that many governmental web pages use analytics tools to watch the number of their visitors. Lastly and very interestingly, the results show that COVID-19 websites have the highest number of trackers, some of them with more than 30 trackers. Nearly every COVID website uses cookies without user consent.
Despite people being worried about online tracking, apparently, governments also breach their citizens’ privacy. The research group states that with this publication the research team aims to put more pressure on governments to clean up their own house first and, by doing so, set an example and be more convincing about the importance of implementing the GDPR in practice.