Citizen Scientists Investigating Cookies and App GDPR compliance - CSI-COP

Created Sept. 29, 2021, 4:14 p.m.

Updated Sept. 29, 2021, 4:14 p.m.

Regardless of background, a community of CSI-COP citizen scientists will be recruited from across Europe and beyond. A series of free-to-attend workshops and a MOOC will be developed with training material to informally educate about GDPR. CSI-COP’s community of citizen scientists will be a) fully trained to explore cookies and apps for embedded trackers, b) supported throughout their research, CSI-COP citizen scientists will investigate cookies on websites they normally visit, and apps on smart devices they use daily, and c) encouraged to record and report to the CSI-COP consortium the number and types of trackers they uncover in cookies and apps.
CSI-COP’s well connected eleven partner consortium made up of seven universities, one non-profit, two SMEs and one Association will promote and support the citizen scientists as role models, with the university partners inviting them post-project as pro-privacy champions.

Aim

The aim of CSI-COP project is to engage citizen scientists to collaborate on investigating compliance of the EU's general data protection regulation (GDPR) on websites and in apps on Android powered mobile devices. This will enable the EU to better understand how far we are being tracked-by-default as we use the Internet visiting websites and use apps on our phones.

How to participate

Free informal education will equip interested people from the general public to gain knowledge of the human right to privacy online, and the practical skills to uncover cookies and third-party trackers on websites and in apps.The accessible informal education will be available through an online workshop (MOOC), and subject to covid19-restrictions, face-to-face 1/2 day workshops in CSI-COP consortium partner countries.

More information will be available in early Spring 2021. To register interest in taking the free online informal education workshops and to join the CSI-COP project please go to the project website here: https://csi-cop.eu/ and create an account at this link:

https://csi-cop.eu/wp-login.php?action=register