WSJ releases study of website user data sharing with third parties

The Wall Street Journal has compiled a list of 70 popular American websites that require registration and analyzed them based on how they share user data. For each entry, they report whether the user's e-mail address, name, username, age, and zip code are shared and to which website(s) that information is given. Each entry also contains a response from the website as well as the recipient websites if they company responded to the WSJ's inquiry.

In the study, they learned that the Wall Street Journal itself was sharing e-mail addresses and names with four companies, and users' ages or birth years with nine. In response to the investigation, the newspaper noted that many of these transmissions were done in error, and the company "is working to close that hole."

Two years ago, the Journal released a similar study related to data shared by mobile apps.