Researchers Discover Individuals' User Browsing Habits From Unprotected Clickstreams

[engine]

Researchers have discovered the browsing habits of German Individuals through clickstreams that don't appear to be anonymized.

Is it any surprise of this loophole? You'd think that with this discovery that the law will clamp down and force businesses to anonymize the data, which they should be doing already.

The pair found that 95% of the data they obtained came from 10 popular browser extensions.

"What these companies are doing is illegal in Europe but they do not care," said Ms Eckert, adding that the research had kicked off a debate in Germany about how to curb the data gathering habits of the firms.

Before the data is used to customise the range of adverts which people see, any information that could be used to identify exactly who generated the clicks is supposed to be removed. Researchers Discover Individuals' User Browsing Habits From Unprotected Clickstreams [bbc.co.uk]

[keyplyr]

These "German Individuals" are obviously not reading Webmaster World.