Sixteen of the 23 current US presidential campaigns have websites that fail to meet basic privacy standards for user data, a new study by the Internet Society's Online Trust Alliance (OTA) has found.
The audit found that the sites have privacy policies that are poorly written and ambiguous, and they allow visitor data to be shared freely with third parties. Four campaigns had no privacy policies at all, and two did not have any email authentication measures in place to protect users against phishing attacks.
The seven sites that made the cut are those associated with the campaigns of President Donald Trump and Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Marianne Williamson. Sites failing the audit included those associated with the campaigns of Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bennet, and Andrew Yang.
"The number of campaigns that failed to pass the 2020 Presidential Campaign Trust Audit is alarming given the increased attention to privacy and security issues over the last four years," Jeff Wilbur, technical director of the OTA, wrote in a statement.
Sites that OTA audited serve as the primary online presence for the presidential campaigns and are a venue for direct communication with voters, data collection, and fundraising. The weaknesses that OTA uncovered were primarily on the data privacy side and not with site security.
OTA audited the websites and email practices of 2020 US presidential campaigns using the same metrics it uses to evaluate the privacy, security, and consumer protection practices of some 1,200 organizations across multiple sectors.
The audit ..
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