Title: Privacy-invading mechanisms in e-commerce - a case study on German tourism websites

Authors: Tatiana Ermakova; Anke Hohensee; Ines Orlamünde; Benjamin Fabian

Addresses: Chair of Business Informatics, esp. Social Media and Data Science, University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany ' Chair of Business Informatics, esp. Social Media and Data Science, University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany ' Chair of Business Informatics, esp. Social Media and Data Science, University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany ' Chair of Business Intelligence und Data Science, Hochschule für Telekommunikation Leipzig, Gustav-Freytag-Straße 43 – 45, 04277 Leipzig, Germany; Institute of Information Systems, Humboldt University of Berlin, Spandauer Str. 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany

Abstract: Against the importance of online privacy, this paper investigates German tourism websites previously shown as actively adopting mail tracking technology. For a sample of 50 highly visited websites, we analyse the quantity and type of data both mandatory and optional for registration. We further examine the extent to which personal data is collected in the background. Finally, we explore whether this practice can be associated with visibility of a privacy policy and other website design elements. Our results show an average of 24 contacted third-party websites, 42 generated cookies and 15 active trackers. Websites with visible general terms and conditions and privacy policies are connected with a significantly higher number of third-party services. Websites inviting users to follow them on Twitter contact significantly more third-party services and store significantly more cookies. There are high correlations of over 0.7 between the numbers of contacted third-party services, generated cookies and activated trackers.

Keywords: e-commerce; privacy; web tracking; personal data; data collection; Germany.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2019.097629

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2019 Vol.20 No.2, pp.105 - 126

Received: 08 Dec 2016
Accepted: 01 Mar 2017
Published online: 04 Feb 2019 *

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