Synthesis Report on EU Horizon2020 CSI-COP Project Results

CSI-COP, a citizen science project responding to the Horizon2020 research and innovation (RIA) grant call in the theme science with and for society (SwafS) under the topic ‘Exploring and Supporting Citizen Science’, is the first of its kind investigating websites and apps for compliance with a new EU regulation: the general data protection regulations (GDPR). With six specific objectives, six milestones and six expected impacts, the project realised its research and innovation goals through its outputs. These included production of a classification of the different types of website and app cookies and other online tracking tools (CSI-COP Taxonomy), and the innovation of a searchable open-access web knowledge base of websites and apps investigated by the project’s citizen scientists and researchers (CSI-COP Repository). This document presents a synthesis of CSI-COP project activities and results to raise awareness of rights accorded in the GDPR, and the investigations of GDPR compliance in websites and apps by citizen scientists and the project researchers. CSI-COP legacy includes forming a post-project forum with the project’s Privacy Champions who emerged from the project’s citizen scientists. The long-term legacy aims to continue raising the project’s message. Additionally, CSI-COP’s post-project activity will raise awareness of the EU’s Digital Services Act, and the risks to personal data from artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as large language models (LLMs), for example OpenAI-Microsoft’s ChatGPT, and Google’s BARD now applied as answer-summarisers in evolved browser-search. The long-term aim is contributing to the creation of effective standards for website and app cookie  notices and privacy policies, and beyond that, in Internet-connected devices in the home and transportation.