Data Exfiltration by Hotjar Revisited

Libor Polčák, Alexandra Slezáková

2023

Abstract

Session replay scripts allow website owners to record the interaction of each web site visitor and aggregate the interaction to reveal the interests and problems of the visitors. However, previous research identified such techniques as privacy intrusive. This position paper updates the information on data collection by Hotjar. It revisits the previous findings to detect and describe the changes. The default policy to gather inputs changed; the recording script gathers only information from explicitly allowed input elements. Nevertheless, Hotjar does record content reflecting users’ behaviour outside input HTML elements. Even though we propose changes that would prevent the leakage of the reflected content, we argue that such changes will most likely not appear in practice. The paper discusses improvements in handling TLS. Not only do web page operators interact with Hotjar through encrypted connections, but Hotjar scripts do not work on sites not protected by TLS. Hotjar respects the Do Not Track signal; however, users need to connect to Hotjar even in the presence of the Do Not Track setting. Worse, malicious web operators can trick Hotjar into recording sessions of users with the active Do Not Track setting. Finally, we propose and motivate the extension of GDPR Art. 25 obligations to processors.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Polčák L. and Slezáková A. (2023). Data Exfiltration by Hotjar Revisited. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST; ISBN 978-989-758-672-9, SciTePress, pages 347-354. DOI: 10.5220/0012192500003584

in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist23,
author={Libor Polčák and Alexandra Slezáková},
title={Data Exfiltration by Hotjar Revisited},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST},
year={2023},
pages={347-354},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012192500003584},
isbn={978-989-758-672-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST
TI - Data Exfiltration by Hotjar Revisited
SN - 978-989-758-672-9
AU - Polčák L.
AU - Slezáková A.
PY - 2023
SP - 347
EP - 354
DO - 10.5220/0012192500003584
PB - SciTePress