64% of Third-Party Web Apps Access Sensitive Data Without Justification

A sweeping new analysis of digital infrastructure has uncovered a critical lapse in data governance, revealing that nearly two-thirds of third-party applications integrated into major websites are accessing sensitive user information without any legitimate business need.

The findings, detailed in the 2026 State of Web Exposure Research released today by Reflectiz, paint a concerning picture of the modern web, where the convenience of digital integrations is increasingly outpacing security oversight.

The study, which examined 4,700 leading global websites, indicates a sharp widening of the governance gap regarding client-side risk. Researchers found that 64 percent of external applications now harvest sensitive data without valid justification, representing a significant 25 percent spike compared to the previous year. This escalation is largely attributed to the unchecked proliferation of marketing tools and unmanaged digital integrations that operate outside the direct view of IT security teams. Common utilities such as Google Tag Manager, Shopify, and Facebook Pixel were identified as frequent sources of this over-permissioned access, often deployed without adequate scoping of their data privileges.

The security implications are particularly dire for the public sector, which has seen a dramatic rise in malicious activity. The report highlights that incidents involving government websites jumped from just 2 percent to nearly 13 percent, while the education sector has seen compromise rates quadruple, with one in seven websites now showing signs of active exploitation. Security leaders in these fields pointed to budget constraints and staffing shortages as the primary hurdles to securing their digital environments against these threats.

Simon Arazi, VP of Product at Reflectiz, emphasized that the root of the problem lies in organizational behavior rather than just technical failure. He noted that companies are granting sensitive access by default rather than by exception, a loophole that attackers are aggressively exploiting. The data suggests that marketing and digital departments are responsible for introducing 43 percent of all third-party risk, often bypassing security protocols to deploy tools quickly. Consequently, compromised sites were found to connect to nearly three times as many external domains and load double the number of trackers compared to secure sites.

The analysis further revealed startling gaps in financial security, noting that 47 percent of applications running within payment checkout frames lacked justification for being there. In a test of security leadership benchmarks, the report found that the vast majority of organizations failed to meet basic criteria, with only one website, ticketweb.uk, achieving a perfect score across the entire framework.