Protecting Teens’ Online Data Privacy Research Wins Student Paper Award
Dec. 3, 2024 – A UC Irvine student-led team has won a best paper award for their research findings that many popular apps and websites don’t protect the data privacy of its young users. Children and adolescents spend a lot of time in front of screens, on social media, gaming applications and educational programs. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 46 percent of teens, aged 13 to 17, are online almost constantly.
The UCI electrical engineering and computer science research team conducted an audit to assess compliance with U.S. laws that are meant to protect online privacy for this vulnerable group – the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The researchers audited popular platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Duolingo, Minecraft, Roblox and Quizlet. Their paper, DiffAudit: Auditing Privacy Practices of Online Services for Children and Adolescents,” won the Best Student Paper award at the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) in Madrid, Spain, in November.
The researchers found numerous privacy issues such as widespread collection and sharing of personal information without proper parental consent and user age disclosure, sharing of personal information with numerous third-party advertising and tracking services without proper consent, and inconsistent privacy policy disclosures.
The work was led by Olivia Figueira, computer science doctoral student, co-advised by Athina Markopoulou, professor and director of ProperData Center, and Scott Jordan, professor of computer science and ProperData co-principal investigator, and in collaboration with Rahmadi Trimananda, a former ProperData project scientist who is now with Comcast Research.
The researchers analyzed data collection and sharing practices through network traffic generated while using these apps and websites. Their findings revealed that all these popular services engage in problematic practices, and that they don’t sufficiently change their practices for young versus adult users, as expected by privacy laws.
“As legislation surrounding children’s and adolescents’ online privacy advances, we need to continue our auditing efforts to enforce privacy regulations and better protect young users online as a result,” said Figueira. “We call on these platforms to improve their practices to better protect young users’ privacy online.”
Markopoulou says the ProperData team’s research on children’s privacy is progressing in several directions. “We are investigating the link between data collection with targeting and potential harms, proposing effective ways for age verification, and advocating for informing and enforcing privacy laws for children such as the federal Kids Online Privacy Act and California bills.”
– Lori Brandt
