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I believe Amazon, Airbnb, airlines and many others are doing / were doing same on their web pages too. It allow to provide better personalized (TM) experience and significantly increase ROI. There is good book how it works in offline world. https://www.npr.org/2017/02/13/514322899/aisles-have-eyes-wa...
I believe Amazon, Airbnb, airlines and many others are doing / were doing same on their web pages too. It allow to provide better personalized (TM) experience and significantly increase ROI. There is good book how it works in offline world. https://www.npr.org/2017/02/13/514322899/aisles-have-eyes-wa...
Apple iOS is turning into an Android, but without a headphone jack.
Apple iOS is turning into an Android, but without a headphone jack.
OP misconstrues an iOS tracking dialog to support their complaint: > The strange thing is that Apple introduced strict measures in iOS 14.5 to prevent developers from fingerprinting users. The dialog text in their screenshot reads: > Allow “App” to track your activity across other companies’ apps and sites? Users refusing this permission are not prohibiting tracking by the company that issued the dialog. They are pro…
Seems reasonable enough
I was about to say, this is about as unsurprising and reasonable as Google Search listening to what you type into the search bar and which links on the search results page you click.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was about to say, this is about as unsurprising and reasonable as Google Search listening to what you type into the search bar and which links on the search results page you click.
Many sites, probably including Google Search, also monitor where you move your mouse cursor, even if you’re not clicking. A lot less reasonable and more surprising.
On iOS, there is no mouse cursor, so there is nothing to track in the first place.
On macOS, you have to give permissions on a per-app and per-domain basis. For example, if I want to let Google Maps use my current location, first I will get a prompt to give that permission to the browser I am using in the OS settings, and then I have to give that permission again from within the browser specifically for Google Maps. Also, the web browser shows which specific permissions a page I am on has, and I can revoke them at any given time. Same thing for tracking mouse cursor movements, except it is governed by the macOS accessibility permissions iirc, rather than location permissions, and I don't remember Google Search ever requesting that. Just checked, and the only app that has those permissions on my machine is Discord, and it requested those only when I attempted screensharing.
Maybe I am mistaken, and there is some trick around needing permissions to track mouse cursor movements in a browser on macOS (especially given how complex in-browser JS execution behaviors have gotten over time). In which case, someone please correct me.
I agree though, tracking mouse cursor movements is definitely a bit more surprising and unexpected than tracking what you type in the website's search bar. Which I would be way more surprised by it not being tracked. It's like expecting Amazon or Steam or Twitter to not track what queries you search for in their search bars (which all of them definitely do, as evident by you being able to look at your search history from within the website).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many sites, probably including Google Search, also monitor where you move your mouse cursor, even if you’re not clicking. A lot less reasonable and more surprising.
Maybe on Windows, idk, but I am not sure how Google Search could do it on either iOS or macOS. On iOS, there is no mouse cursor, so there is nothing to track in the first place. On macOS, you have to give permissions on a per-app and per-domain basis. For example, if I want to let Google Maps use my current location, first I will get a prompt to give that permission to the browser I am using in the OS settings, and t…