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Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

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Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#21

Post by amelius »

TekMol wrote: post #7
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…

How difficult would it be for a bot to simulate a human's mouse movements? Very very hard. Because the bot author does not have the giant database that FB has to analyze how humans move the mouse around. Also the bot author does not know which aspects FB looks at to determine if it's a human. And even if the bot author had all that information, it would still be super hard to write an AI that accomplishes a given tas…

> Very very hard. Because the bot author does not have the giant database that FB has to analyze how humans move the mouse around.

Don't forget that Facebook's false positive rate should be very low. There are lots of humans on their platform, and they should all pass the test.

This makes it easier to construct a bot that will pass the test.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#22

Post by ckastner »

> We collect information from and about the computers, phones, connected TVs [emphasis mine]

Personally, I find this even more disturbing. Does this "only" apply to TVs where a user is logged on, or are they also building shadow profiles for any smart TV that comes with the Facebook App preloaded and is connected to the internet?

At least for Samsung and Sony, I can easily see them cooperating with Facebook for a negligible fee.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#23

Post by palerdot »

johnnyfaehell wrote: post #18
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.

If robots can mimic human conversations, this should also be trivial. This not only looks like a lame excuse, but also massively underestimates the ability of automatons that mimic humans.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#24

Post by jhowell »

AznHisoka wrote: post #9
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…

I actually think its difficult to simulate mouse movements. Is there even a way to do so using PhantomJS or Headless chrome?

I would imagine that FB is not using these libraries but instead using their engineering teams to develop these "solutions." Perhaps some of our friends are actually "working against" our privacy.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#25

Post by jhowell »

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.

From a UI perspective it makes sense to persist my mouse activity to a database for eternity?

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#26

Post by kaybe »

angott wrote: post #14
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.

Not really. If you record and save that data, the reason is secondary.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#27

Post by Chilinot »

TekMol wrote: post #7
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…

How difficult would it be for a bot to simulate a human's mouse movements? Very very hard. Because the bot author does not have the giant database that FB has to analyze how humans move the mouse around. Also the bot author does not know which aspects FB looks at to determine if it's a human. And even if the bot author had all that information, it would still be super hard to write an AI that accomplishes a given tas…

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 based on what you are doing and where you are moving your mouse.

This could then probably be used to build some form of algorithm that moves the mouse for you with noise (accelerating up & down along the way, deviation from a straight line, stopping in the middle of the line, etc.).

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#28

Post by zavandor »

TekMol wrote: post #7
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…

How difficult would it be for a bot to simulate a human's mouse movements? Very very hard. Because the bot author does not have the giant database that FB has to analyze how humans move the mouse around. Also the bot author does not know which aspects FB looks at to determine if it's a human. And even if the bot author had all that information, it would still be super hard to write an AI that accomplishes a given tas…

I don't think it should be that difficult. Project for a weekend hackathon or so. Collect same mouse movement data with a js on your own website if you own anything mildly popular or partner with someone and buy it off, stick it into some off the shelf GAN, job's done. Turing test is broken by modern deep learning

At least the mouse movements themselves shouldn't be difficult to do given a source of data. Simulating that you click on same FB UI elements as real people with same statistical properties on other hand is where you might be lacking the data to do it properly

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#29

Post by jhowell »

proto-n wrote: post #11
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.

Maybe telling your friends that you didn't actually see their message and that instead the algorithm FB uses to record my mouse activity sometimes reports that I have read messages that I have not. This sounds dangerous and could be harmful to a person's credibility if another with bad intentions acts.

Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements

#30

Post by amelius »

Chilinot wrote: post #27
TekMol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How difficult would it be for a bot to simulate a human's mouse movements? Very very hard. Because the bot author does not have the giant database that FB has to analyze how humans move the mouse around. Also the bot author does not know which aspects FB looks at to determine if it's a human. And even if the bot author had all that information, it would still be super hard to write an AI that accomplishes a given tas…

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.
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