Security News > 2020 > February > They can't collect your bins or fix your roads. They let Google stalk visitors to their websites. Yes, it's UK local government
The study [PDF] shows that nearly all councils across the UK exposed data about visitors to their websites, which was then sold on to private companies.
These elements enable users to be tracked around the web, scraping together whatever information it can, such as what websites and apps they're looking at, their location and their device.
One of the ad exchanges that used RTB, the Council Advertising Network, shared people's data from 34 council websites with 22 companies, Brave said.
"We automatically block categories such as gambling, alcohol, payday loans, politics and adult themes in order to protect users of our council partners' websites from advertising inappropriate for a public sector environment," a spokesperson said.
A report last year by Cookiebot found that 82 per cent of EU government websites were slurping up information on EU citizens' browsing habits.