| Author | Stöver, Alina; Gerber, Nina; Pridöhl, Henning; Maass, Max; Bretthauer, Sebastian; Spiecker gen. Döhmann, Indra; Hollick, Matthias; Herrmann, Dominik |
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| Abstract | Many websites contain services from third parties. Misconfigurations of these services can lead to missing compliance with legal
obligations and privacy risks for website users. Previous research indicates that one cause for such privacy issues is missing awareness.
However, reasons for the missing awareness and other reasons for
the prevalence of privacy issues are not widely researched; that
includes website owners’ dealing with those issues. To shed light on
the issue, we analyze 1043 responses from website owners to a notification about a privacy issue on their website using thematic analysis, following an exploratory and qualitative approach. Our analysis
shows that, next to unawareness of the issue, incorrect technical implementation and ambiguous responsibilities are among the reasons
for privacy issues. Also, website owners face different challenges,
such as a lack of knowledge or slow organizational coordination
and processes. In addition, our results show that the circumstances
in which they operate their website influences how they act and
what challenges they face. To illustrate these differences in website
owners, we derive three personas from our thematic analysis: (1)
the Ignorant Hobbyist, (2) the Busy Self-Employed, and (3) the Informed Multi-Stakeholder. These personas cover the majority of
the aspects of the analyzed responses and represent the diversity of
website owners and their backgrounds. Given the challenges and
backgrounds of website owners, we discuss which prerequisites
must be fulfilled to remediate privacy issues on websites. Finally,
we present measures that support website owners in remediating
privacy issues and show how to adapt these measures to the needs
of different website owners. We hope that better support for website
owners will also lead to better privacy for website visitors. |
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