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Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

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Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#151

Post by code_duck »

mkay581 wrote: post #131
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…

For some people, there is no difference ultimately. Because it's not that they aren't doing anything malicious with the collected data now, it's about the fact that they CAN do it if they desire to (ethical or not) in the future--the data is being collected, stored (perhaps indefinitely), and will always be accessible. In a world where capitalism reigns, to think that any large corporate business would treat our data…

I'm picturing the minimum being a system that collects nothing more than a mouse movements, rather than also IP address, full URL, user account, and other details that could easily tie it to a person. I mean more the minimum as an abstract ideal, than something anyone actually does.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#152

Post by pouta »

amelius wrote: post #30
Chilinot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably start with recording all of your mouse movements over a period of a month or so. Record speed, acceleration, how straight each move is, how much each move deviates from a straight line, how many times the mouse movement stops along its way to its target, where you place the mouse when you scroll, etc. Using these metrics you could probably start to draw some characteristics of how your mouse acts b…

I was thinking more of a machine-learning approach, e.g. using a GAN network.

I was thinking the same. Maybe we should do it together...

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#153

Post by code_duck »

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…

Many permissions like that are used in ways a typical user doesn't expect. Companies will explain it away by saying you agreed to it in the terms of service, although it's generally acknowledged that almost nobody reads or understands those terms for any company. For example, most people don't realize that when you give an app read access to your photos, it probably will scan every single one of them for data and upload it to the app's maker. Practices like this are so common that I don't even think the developers understand that they're abusing users' trust.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#154

Post by taurine »

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…

> Stupid cat and mouse game.

I suspect this is part of covering their ass for GDPR. Pose everything as a security problem, so you can claim you have legit interest in tracking all of that.

> How difficult would it be for a bot to simulate a human's mouse movements?

Simulating? Extremely difficult. Perturbing pre-recorded paths is a bit easier to do, but requires pre-recording of a lot of paths. One of the fastest ways to get your Poker bot banned is to not fix this one way or the other.

> Also, doesn't this conflict with rare types of input devices? Or people with a motor function disability?

It still tracks the mouse movements, just now being able to classify their users as disabled or using an arcane device (both of which are interesting tidbits to add to your advertisement profile).

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#155

Post by croon »

bzbarsky wrote: post #141
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.

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.]

You are assuming the facebook.com page. He was talking about one of their apps.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#156

Post by gkya »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #110
gkya wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, certainly. But I don't have background programs that connect randomly, and I have observed this enough times that I can say this.

As somebody who worked in the past on a piece of software that generated heatmaps from cursor movements on websites, I can confirm that it's a very widespread thing. Well, it was ~5 years ago, so I'd guess it's even worse now.

How did you use this data? Well, except for bot detection that is. I can't think of a particularly useful way this data can be utilised.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#157

Post by taurine »

Klathmon wrote: post #43
amelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also don't forget that Facebook probably has to do all detection in Javascript on the client, i.e. with limited resources. I suspect they don't send every mouse-movement to the server. This also means they probably don't have fine-grained historical data.

Not necessarily. I've only given it a few minutes thought, but position and time data is really small, and easy to compress (you don't need to send anything while the user isn't moving the mouse). If it's sent in batches or over an already open websocket, it's not like it's using a ton of resources on the client. Assuming all of their users (guessing a billion daily active users) are on desktop half of the time (a wi…

Yes, the standard way to do this a few years back for conversion optimization, was to RLE compress and send the data in intervals. Also the resolution/measurement does not need to be in the milliseconds.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#158

Post by arbie »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #44
akerro wrote: post #39

According to lcamtuf[1] how people move mouse and use keyboard are unique per person, it's your personal digital-fingerprint that can be transferred to track you elsewhere. [1] From Book "Silence on the Wire"

Unfortunately, it's not just JS, but several other indicators. In practice, if you don't use the Tor Browser, it's as if you decided to leave tracks everywhere, almost identifying yourself. Yet, this is not common knowledge among web users. These are the things that children need to be taught in schools. The society as a whole needs to be aware and learn how to protect itself.

Absolutely.

Proof: https://panopticlick.eff.org

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#159

Post by burger_moon »

gkya wrote: post #156
seba_dos1 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who worked in the past on a piece of software that generated heatmaps from cursor movements on websites, I can confirm that it's a very widespread thing. Well, it was ~5 years ago, so I'd guess it's even worse now.

How did you use this data? Well, except for bot detection that is. I can't think of a particularly useful way this data can be utilised.

For a non-nefarious use case, it can be used to iterate on the UI to create a better user experience because it can expose areas that people aren't seeing on the webpage. Your site might have the important content or useful navigation in a place that users aren't noticing which causes them to leave the site in frustration.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#160

Post by dest »

Applejinx wrote: post #91
dest wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess mouse movements are a very good way to identify people across websites. It's also an efficient way to distinguish people from machines. Think about the click-only reCaptcha for example.

Change mouse brand to surreptitiously become another person without telling a single lie or changing any normal user data :)

How often would you be ready to change mouse brand?

Would you change mouse each time you change browser tabs, keeping a mouse for Facebook and a mouse for other websites?

Also, keep in mind mouse tracking is just another technique deployed to identify you. It's not supposed to be a silver bullet.

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