Ethical and User-friendly Donation of Digital Trace Data

*A Software-as-a-Service Solution to

Support Data Donation for Research*

Data Donation

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) grants all natural persons within the European Union (EU) the right to an electronic copy of their personal data as collected by data controllers upon request. All major data controllers, such as social media platforms, banks, online shops, loyalty card systems, and public transportation cards comply with this right by providing their clients with a “data download package” (DDP). With the Port software service, this data package can be donated for research:

  1. A person requests their personal DDP at the platform of interest.
  2. They download it onto their own personal device.
  3. On their own device, only the features of interest to the researcher are then extracted from the DDP.
  4. The person can inspect and edit the extracted features, after which they can consent (or decline) to donate.
  5. After providing consent, the donated data is sent to a data storage which can be accessed by the researcher for further analyses.

Further Reading

Welcome at Europe’s Data Donation Infrastructure

Privacy-preserving local analysis of digital trace data: A proof-of-concept

A framework for privacy preserving digital trace data collection through data donation

Pilot

Several pilots have been done with the Port software service to gather feedback from stakeholders on how to improve the software. Below an example of a pilot study by Rense Corten in the LISS panel (CenterData).

[Presented at the MASS Workshop 2023 in Manchester.](https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/365134a4-a17e-4250-8da2-66b9e095d609/73569db6-689d-43a6-9fde-21ab830a4e22/Port-Data-Donation-MASS-Workshop-2023.pdf)

Presented at the MASS Workshop 2023 in Manchester.

Co-created with

https://www.uu.nl/en

https://www.uu.nl/en

https://www.uva.nl/en

https://www.uva.nl/en

Funded by

https://pdi-ssh.nl/en

https://pdi-ssh.nl/en