We are all very clear that when we browse the Internet, the websites we use have monitoring and control "cookies", in order to obtain data from us, and use them for what best suits them.

But what I did not know is that government websites also do the same, or almost the same. This has been verified by a team of researchers, who have published it at the Web Science Conference, and which they have titled "Measuring Web Cookies in Governmental Websites".

It can be viewed at:  https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3501247.3531545

What these people expose is that most of the websites of the governments of developed countries use cookies and tracking trackers, sometimes their own and other times from third parties, who do not know who they are or what they use them for.

They have analyzed the G20 countries and have presented the results in the published study. The data is, in my opinion discouraging, as it is in many cases from countries that claim to defend the privacy of their citizens, and have published regulations such as the GDPR.

In one of the graphs we can see that the country that applies the fewest cookies and trackers is Japan, and it does so in 77% of government websites, Germany in 87%, and 10 of the G20 countries (including France) exceed the 95%, with some like Russia at 100%.

And the same happens with the websites of international organizations. Around 95% of them have cookies and tracking trackers.

All this tells us that we cannot trust even government websites, and that we must always be aware that we are subject to a certain control.

It will be up to us to use Internet search engine services that somewhat limit monitoring (such as Brave and others), as well as the use of VPN's that allow us to browse a little more securely.

But knowing that there is nothing assured and that we are exposed to others knowing everything about us. Dear friends, this is the technological world we are in. And we have to be aware of this.

By Amador Palacios

Reflections of Amador Palacios on topics of Social and Technological News; other opinions different from mine are welcome

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

en_USEN