Through this research collaboration, we hope to learn more about trends across different industries and geographies
Rising consumer interest in digital privacy has increased scrutiny over companies and their data collection activities. In an effort to better understand what companies are asking their customers and site visitors to consent to, what data they collect, and the privacy practices used on websites, Avast has partnered with Diffbot, a developer of public APIs for extracting data from web pages.
This research collaboration includes Galina Alperovich, Elizaveta Saifutdinova, Szilard Nemes, Martin Kostelansky from Avast and Mike Tung and Julia Wiedmann from Diffbot. The team analyzed various aspects of popular websites' privacy practices and correlated them with the company’s information such as industry, revenue, country, etc. Through this research collaboration, we hope to learn more about the trends in digital privacy at scale and across different industries and geographies using Data Science and Machine learning.
Data Science tools in combination with big data can discover patterns that are hard or impossible to see by the naked eye. In an effort to increase transparency and shine a spotlight on digital privacy, Diffbot and Avast are combining expertise in machine learning, digital privacy, and Diffbot’s comprehensive internet knowledge graph.
In the coming months, we will be releasing our findings on the Avast blog, so stay tuned. Moreover, we invite you as our reader as well as the general public to tell us your most urgent questions regarding digital privacy by filling in this anonymous one-question form. We will then try to come up with answers based on our research and data. Our team is hopeful that increasing transparency on data collection practices will allow consumers to make more informed decisions when sharing their data online. This increased awareness also should move organizations to take consumer privacy concerns seriously.
Further reading:
How to read a privacy policy
How to stay safe when signing EULAs
Why your privacy policy should be customer-focused
