Despite everything that has happened over the last four years, the security posture of the 2020 presidential candidates' campaign websites is little better and often worse than it was in 2016.
An Online Trust Audit, from the Online Trust Alliance (OTA -- part of the Internet Society), examined the visible privacy, website security and consumer protection postures of the current 23 candidates' campaign sites. Only seven candidates achieved the OTA Honor Roll (that is, with no failures in any of the three areas), but none with flying colors. These seven include Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, but current Democratic frontrunners Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden both fail.
Interestingly, the OTA forewarned all the candidates about the publication of this audit, giving them seven days to update their sites. Only one candidate site took up this option -- but the update was insufficient to alter its 'fail' result.
One worrying aspect of the survey is the extent to which the candidates, treated as a 'sector', lag behind a similar 2018 audit of other industry sectors -- by a ratio of more than 2:1 in achieving the Honor Roll. For example, 91% of the federal sector and 73% of the financial sector gained the Honor Roll; compared to just 30% of the candidates sector.
The biggest area of failure was in user privacy. Every one of the candidates that did not achieve the Honor Roll failed here. Putting this in context, the average score was 56 with a failure bar set at 60. In the 2018 audit of other sectors, the average score was 70.
The three primary areas of concern over privacy were the lack of a privacy statement (five campaigns had no discoverable statement); an inadequate statement; and too freely sharing user data.
Only one of the sites explicitly ..
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