Investigating GDPR compliance across consumer-related websites: Are businesses telling consumers the truth about data collection?

Abstract

The project aims to examine the compliance of GDPR among websites of various sectors. By doing a content analysis on selected websites of Fortune 500, various patterns emerged for complying with the regulations. The majority of websites do not inform users of data collection. Most websites adopt communication strategies that inform users of data collection but withhold the rights to opt out. Few websites truly obtain consent and give consumers the option to opt out before data collection. We categorized all the websites into groups of full compliance, partial compliance, and non-compliance. In addition, some businesses have been found to adopt global strategies that only comply with GDPR when users are identified as EU citizens. Lastly, we give provide some recommendations with regards to how businesses could comply with GDPR.