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International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems

HIS 2022: Hybrid Intelligent Systems pp 1284–1292Cite as

Study of Third-Party Analytics Services on University Websites

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Part of the Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems book series (LNNS,volume 647)

Abstract

The accelerated digitalization and the increased use of online services for everyday tasks, online privacy issues are more important than ever before. This also goes for universities which are increasingly moving information and services online. Our study provides a technical overview of prevalence of third-party analytics on university websites. Websites of 40 universities from eight different countries around the world are analyzed to reveal third-party analytics services they use. The study shows that most universities, especially in many technologically advanced western countries, have alarmingly high number of analytics services on their websites. The results emphasize the need for web developers and data protection officers to better assess what kind of data their websites deliver to third parties. This is especially important for universities, as kind of example institutions tasked with advancing the common good.

Keywords

  • Online privacy
  • Third-party analytics services
  • Tracking
  • University Websites

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The top five universities for each country were chosen according to the listing at https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2022.

  2. 2.

    https://edps.europa.eu/edps-inspection-software_en.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by Academy of Finland project 327397, IDA – Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Timi Heino, Sampsa Rauti, Robin Carlsson & Ville Leppänen

Authors
  1. Timi Heino
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  2. Sampsa Rauti
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  3. Robin Carlsson
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  4. Ville Leppänen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sampsa Rauti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computing and Data Science, FLAME University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

    Ajith Abraham

  2. National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Tzung-Pei Hong

  3. Symbiosis International University, Pune, India

    Ketan Kotecha

  4. University of Jinan, Jinan, China

    Kun Ma

  5. Scientific Network for Innovation and Research Excellence, Machine Intelligence Research Labs, Mala, Kerala, India

    Pooja Manghirmalani Mishra

  6. Scientific Network for Innovation and Research Excellence, Machine Intelligence Research Labs, Auburn, WA, USA

    Niketa Gandhi

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Heino, T., Rauti, S., Carlsson, R., Leppänen, V. (2023). Study of Third-Party Analytics Services on University Websites. In: Abraham, A., Hong, TP., Kotecha, K., Ma, K., Manghirmalani Mishra, P., Gandhi, N. (eds) Hybrid Intelligent Systems. HIS 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 647. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27409-1_117

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