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Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

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Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#11

Post by proto-n »

vladharbuz wrote: post #4

This should be no surprise — received chat messages are marked as read on Facebook if you wiggle your mouse after a few minutes of inactivity. To be fair, this makes sense from a UX standpoint. You don't want messages to be marked as read if you have your window open but have walked away from the computer.

This one is quite a big quality of life improvement IMO. It used to be that I sometimes left my browser accidentally open on facebook, and people would get offended because I 'read' their messages and didn't respond.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#14

Post by angott »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #12

It isn't just Facebook that has been doing this. Web development tools are able to track scroll and mouse movements as well, and have been used to test website usage

There is a big difference between using this kind of technology to run usability studies or to provide more targeted advertising.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#15

Post by ajnin »

amelius wrote: post #2

> Facebook said that it tracks mouse movements to help its algorithm distinguish between humans and bots. Stupid cat and mouse game. How difficult would it be for a bot to simulate a human's mouse movements? I suppose not very difficult. Also, doesn't this conflict with rare types of input devices? Or people with a motor function disability? > to also determine if the window is foregrounded or backgrounded Shouldn't…

> Shouldn't there be an API for that?

There is one : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Page_Visibi...

Although I think it can be a privacy concern and somewhat of an anti-feature. For instance, Youtube uses that API to stop playback on mobile when the page or browser is not in the foreground. Of course, there's an extension for that ...

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#18

Post by johnnyfaehell »

sunseb wrote: post #10

This is beyond absurd. Why would you do that? What could go wrong? Is this a social network or spy agency?

To be able to detect robots. Makes sense since most users will move their mouse in a massively different way than default robots. There is also probably some product reason like being able to see if people had their mouse around an ad before clicking it, etc.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#19

Post by zingmars »

lucb1e wrote: post #3
amelius wrote: post #2

> Facebook said that it tracks mouse movements to help its algorithm distinguish between humans and bots. Stupid cat and mouse game. How difficult would it be for a bot to simulate a human's mouse movements? I suppose not very difficult. Also, doesn't this conflict with rare types of input devices? Or people with a motor function disability? > to also determine if the window is foregrounded or backgrounded Shouldn't…

As for the former, I'm pretty sure I'd trigger as robot since I use keyboard mostly (using some special features in Firefox) just because they make it a lot faster and nicer. As for the latter, iirc there are blur/focus(-like) events for the window object. Maybe mouse movements gives them better confidence? Because of course you want to make absolutely sure your users are seeing all the ads.

I wouldn't be surprised if they tracked keyboard input as well.
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