The Privado.ai 2024 State of Website Privacy Report discovers alarming rates of non-compliance and identifies controls needed to avoid privacy fines

Privacy solution provider Privado.ai released its 2024 State of Website Privacy Report, which reveals that 75% of the 100 most visited websites in the U.S. and Europe are not compliant with current privacy regulations.

Despite stricter privacy enforcement in Europe, Privado found a surprising 74% of top websites in Europe do not honor opt-in consent as required by Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Although top websites in the U.S. had a similar non-compliance rate of 76% for not honoring opt-out consent as required by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), Privado found the median volume of compliance risks to be 3X higher in the U.S.

The State of Website Privacy Report is based on data from Privado’s consent monitoring solution collected in September 2024. Privado.ai decided to launch this solution and release this report in response to increasing privacy fines in both the U.S. and Europe.

Six of the 20 largest GDPR fines since 2018 are due to consent compliance violations on websites, with Amazon receiving the second-largest GDPR fine to date, $888M, for targeting users with ads without proper consent in 2021.

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In the US, at least 10 companies since 2022 have been fined for violating consent compliance on websites as regulated by CPRA, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), or HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

With fines mounting and consumers demanding greater privacy, personal data sharing from websites has become a major legal risk for companies worldwide.

State of Website Privacy Report Key Findings

• 76% of the most visited websites in the US do not honor CPRA opt-out signals
• 74% of the most visited websites in Europe do not honor GDPR opt-in consent
• The most visited websites share personal data with an average of 17 advertising 3rd parties in the US and 6 in Europe

“With modern privacy laws now in place, websites have added cookie banners in an attempt to comply, but the banners are usually misconfigured.” said Privado CEO Vaibhav Antil. “Especially as marketing technology constantly changes on websites, privacy teams need continuous consent testing on websites to ensure compliance.”

To comply with the CPRA amendment to CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), websites in the US must block personal data sharing with advertising third parties if the user opts out of data sharing. To comply with GDPR, websites in Europe must block personal data collection and sharing with third parties unless the user provides opt-in consent. Despite increasing privacy fines in the US and Europe, most websites are not honoring the consent requirements in the US or Europe.

Non-compliant websites in the US average 3X more compliance risks than those in Europe
Privacy teams typically lack the visibility and controls to track what third parties are integrated with on their websites and whether they are honoring consent requirements. With teams using so many third parties to optimize marketing and website performance, privacy teams need comprehensive solutions to continuously monitor consent and data flows.

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Top websites in the US and Europe typically share data with over 20 3rd parties
Median 3rd Parties Integrated with Top Websites

Consent management platforms alone do not ensure consent compliance
Consent management platforms (CMPs) are effective at managing the complexity of implementing consent banners and data flows across websites, but CMPs can’t sufficiently monitor and validate consent compliance. Privacy teams need continuous website monitoring solutions to mitigate privacy risk at scale. The solutions should provide a real-time view of third parties integrated with their websites, each data element being sent to which third parties, and consent banner functionality.

Privacy code scanning and consent management platforms together can ensure privacy compliance
Privacy code scanning should be used in conjunction with a consent management platform to implement best-in-class digital tracking governance for websites and mobile apps.

Consent management platforms are critical for collecting, acting on, and recording consent, but they lack the full visibility and governance to ensure personal data doesn’t improperly leak to advertising third parties. Privacy code scanning enables the complete and continuous visibility and governance needed to ensure compliance with complex web of privacy regulations.