We are delighted to welcome Professor Daniel Sokol, University of Southern California, to host a research seminar discussing ‘Cookie Intermediaries: Does Competition Lead to More Privacy?  Evidence from the Dark Web’.

 

Abstract

We study how firms voluntarily share their customer information with third parties and the corresponding consequences. Specifically, we collect cookies of U.S. publicly traded firms that are identified as digital online platforms and examine how they share customer information through these cookies. Based on this sample, we then analyse how the market structure of an industry sector affects the level of personal information leakage on the dark web. The results show that firms in less concentrated markets share more customer information with third-party data brokers and experience more customer privacy information leakage onto the dark web than the firms in more highly concentrated markets. Further, we demonstrate that the data sharing activities with data brokers with more highly concentrated market shares result in less customer personal information leakage. Our results suggest that the market structure and the level of competition are two factors that should be considered for decision-making regarding privacy policy.