thats great step towards security and privacy
Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
51–60 of 188 posts
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#52I assume from this they can infer if you're left or right handed and store that in your profile.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That is victim blaming, just because you do not know that everybody out there is tracking you does not mean that you have decided to let them. I agree that this is something people should be more aware of and school is a good place to start. However it is up to browser manufacturers to fix this, not users.
The comment says "it's as if" you are intentionally leaving traces everywhere. So, the effect is the same as doing it intentionally, not that users are to blame somehow.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#54This is beyond absurd. Why would you do that? What could go wrong? Is this a social network or spy agency?
> Is this a social network or spy agency?
A modern social network is a spy agency where you file your own reports on yourself in return for being able to read those of other people.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#55According 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"
You should check out https://www.typingdna.com/ a startup making this technology available for everyone.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#56Um. This isn’t nefarious. We’ve used inspectlet from time to time to help figure out where there are problems in our UI. It tracks mouse movements as part of a complete session. It’s been really helpful.
The average user is unaware their mouse is being tracked. Without this knowledge or without given an informed choice, it could be argued that they can't act with full consent. They might be less willing to use a site which does this if they did know.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That is victim blaming, just because you do not know that everybody out there is tracking you does not mean that you have decided to let them. I agree that this is something people should be more aware of and school is a good place to start. However it is up to browser manufacturers to fix this, not users.
Wonder if the Facebook Containers for Firefox can stop this type of fingerprinting too.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah that's why I think they'd classify me as a robot.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#59I have always assumed that Facebook uses heat maps to track what is under your pointer. Doesn't every serious site do that to gauge user behavior, interest and interface utilization? I guess the difference is FB is putting it in an available data set along with everything else about consumers' individual lives.
More interesting is "a patent held by the company states that the Facebook app uses voice recognition algorithm, which uses audio recorded by the microphones, to modify the ranking scores of stories in users News Feed." and their speculation that Facebook could soon reveal details about their use of surreptitiously recorded user audio.
Facebook makes a curiously specific denial about audio, which is that it is not used for advertising. Considering their entire business is basically advertising, what does that leave? But all they mean is ad selection. When they were found to be recording audio during the posting of statuses, I believe they claimed it it was so they could recognize the music you were listening to, and know something about your mood. So for a long time, I have thought that they use audio to select other content, like friend suggestions, or to inform the selection of stories that appear on your newsfeed.
Re: Facebook confirms that it tracks mouse movements
#60At this point Facebook can come out and say they track any and everything. They might as well because no one will do a single thing.