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Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

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Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#141

Post by bzbarsky »

vincentmarle wrote: post #84
kreetx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a noob question but doesn't the browser ask for permission to use the microphone? And hence: they can't really listen in if you haven't given it explicitly.

If you attempted to record a video once with the Facebook app, it then has the microphone permissions forever.

Does it?

In Firefox you can grant the permissions once (for the current page only) or grant them forever, your choice. If your browser doesn't offer that choice, that's a problem with your browser.

[Disclaimer: I work on Firefox.]

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#143

Post by bzbarsky »

kreetx wrote: post #136
vincentmarle wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you attempted to record a video once with the Facebook app, it then has the microphone permissions forever.

This is just truly bad if they use the this permission to then record you without knowing! You gave the permission to take a video when you wanted to, not when they want to.. I wonder if the apps and browsers will get a "grant access for 5 minutes" setting, so that one can feel safe with the services of these services. EDIT: Or maybe lock-screen/pulldown-screen (or whatever it's called) notification that has a "remov…

Firefox has both the option of granting the permission only for the current pageload (this is in fact the default behavior!) and exactly the "click the icon and revoke the permission" behavior you are asking for once you have granted the permission. So "browsers" already do this, for some values of "browsers". l)

[Disclaimer: I work on Firefox.]

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#146

Post by princekolt »

monkeynotes wrote: post #116
princekolt wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. AVFoundation provides both a turn-key camera UI view and direct control to the camera and microphone. Correction: Not in the background, but it could do it silently while the app is in the foreground.

Looks like Android P blocks background access to camera and mic too: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17091104/android-p-prevent... I can only assume that up until P developers could record both sound and video in the background. That's some scary shit. [edit] Why isn't there a system level visual indication or audit trail of any camera or mic access? Surely this would be trivial to implement, you could even disable…

Indeed. Finally in Mojave Apple is adding direct control over which apps have access to the camera and microphone, but in general iOS is miles ahead of macOS in regards of privacy control.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#147

Post by rohit2412 »

brlewis wrote: post #82
titzer wrote: post #71

I'm not surprised. Honestly, I stopped trusting them years ago, so pretty much all the words out of their mouths I consider to be BS. I'm not even sure why people apologize for creepy-ass multi-billion dollar companies that treat their users like products and study them like labrats. I'm looking forward to technical solutions to verifiably disable and prevent this kind of tracking. To those talking about "tracking UI…

I am not affiliated with Facebook myself; I barely use it, but given how big it is I bet they do user studies in addition to metrics collection. Metrics alone leave out important parts of the human element, but user studies alone are a biased sample.

Given the speed and comfort of not doing user studies, I expect "move fast and break things" Facebook to not care about user studies at all

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#148

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

mikosty wrote: post #107
vincentmarle wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you attempted to record a video once with the Facebook app, it then has the microphone permissions forever.

Is it like this in Android, iOS or both?

I’m pretty sure iOS doesn’t let you access either the camera or the microphone without displaying a banner.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#149

Post by code_duck »

gbrown wrote: post #115
code_duck wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is how the data is used and the whether it's associated with an individual's permanent personal data. If it's only gathered anonymously and used for internal UI improvement, that isn't objectionable. At the other extreme, association with a real-world individual enables many uses that are potentially harmful, such as unmasking those who legitimately prefer to be anonymous. Edit: I wanted to add that I…

Anonymous data is one identifier or clever match away from identification. This is particularly severe for sites/services/hardware that records audio (man, who would knowingly allow that kind of abuse??), but it can apply to mouse tracking too. Mouse tracking fingerprints could be used to re-identify all sorts of other things.

It depends how much data is collected in the first place, and how much is available to the person trying to break anonymization. If I'm not mistaken, everything is deanonymizable with global traffic analysis.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#150

Post by jartelt »

rohit2412 wrote: post #147
brlewis wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not affiliated with Facebook myself; I barely use it, but given how big it is I bet they do user studies in addition to metrics collection. Metrics alone leave out important parts of the human element, but user studies alone are a biased sample.

Given the speed and comfort of not doing user studies, I expect "move fast and break things" Facebook to not care about user studies at all

I know several UX researchers at facebook. Yes, they do in person user studies.
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