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I was at a University that paid for some tracking software we self-hosted. It showed a highlighted webpage showing gradients over the most common places they sc

I was at a University that paid for some tracking software we self-hosted. It showed a highlighted webpage showing gradients over the most common places they scrolled too. Adblock lists are community maintained, so whether this stuff is blocked depends a lot on people who actually enjoy having their network debug panel open. Facebook's tracking pixel their e-commerce affiliates use is insane. It sends most mouse movements and they use it to determine what words users hover their mouse over! Their AI/marketing engine is pretty advanced, to the point where their predictive analysis is accurate enough people swear Facebook/Instragram are sending microphone data. Sure they cannot track you across tabs and browsers ... directly. But they do. If 30% of the pages you visit have some kind of Adobe Omniture or Facebook pixel, they do in fact gleam a ton of data about you. This AI is so powerful it can predict products you want, potentially before you even verbally announce them. That's incredibly powerful predictive analysis ... used to cure cance---oh no wait. It's not. It's just used to sell you shit. What a waste of tech honestly. I know a lot of people here use uBlock Origin since there are concerns with Ghostery/AdBlock/etc either allowing in certain ads for a price or selling some of your data to be viable. The only real solution for tech people is to run a Javascript blocker like NoScript, and explicitly white listing what you want to run .. which is honestly a ton-o-work.

dahart 9y ago
I agree with 100% of what you said, the level of tech being used for behavior predictions is scary and the level of tech being used for sales seems like we could be putting all this engineering to better use. OTOH, this seems like natural economics to me given our system, for better or worse. Money is the driver of all things, sadly. Yep, heat maps for mouse movements are a very common technique. You get click location data out of Google Analytics and everyone uses Google Analytics. But we should be clear and careful -- since I'm using the web site, my click data is not something I can ever keep private from the web site. We can (and probably should) keep it from third parties, but first party mouse and keyboard data isn't a privacy concern. Good point about cross-tab tracking, this is fairly common too, and an ad blocker does usually block this. But, the article was primarily about key logging, and the iframed ads can't do any key logging. Don't get me wrong; I use an ad blocker myself, and I think it's a good idea. I just wanted to make the point that blocking only 3rd party content does not solve the problem this article pointed at, and it especially doesn't solve direct key logging or mouse tracking by the website you're using.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  "first party mouse and keyboard data isn't a privacy concern" If that data can be used to infer anything about me, it certainly is a privacy concern for me. I think of it like going to a library and instead of freely browsing through the books without being watched, instead being spied on and every book I look at and even where my gaze travels through each book's pages being monitored. This is a paranoid's nightmare level of surveillance, and that's what we're gradually being weaned in to accepting. It certainly is a major privacy concern for me. Ideally, the internet would have been built in such a way as to allow fully private and anonymous use, as it's really nobody's business but your own what you look at, what you're interested in, or what you read. We've helped build the internet in to a spy's paradise, and it's really sad.
  - dahart 9y ago
    > I think of it like going to a library and instead of freely browsing through the books without being watched, instead being spied on and every book I look at and even where my gaze travels through each book's pages being monitored. I totally agree and empathize with the increasingly privacy hostile place the internet is. But, that analogy seems a little hyperbolic to me. The library currently does track which books you check out, and maybe fine you when you’re late to return them. They do track which books are popular, in order to figure out what to stock. Some libraries track how their building is being used, and my local library does have cameras. These are all the same kinds of things web sites are doing. It may be more aggressive on a site, and more focused on selling you something, but it’s not fundamentally different. First party sites (not ads) aren’t tracking your gaze or invading your privacy, they’re responding to what you ask for, and using some of the breadcrumbs you leave to improve conversions if they can. Talking to a person face to face has exactly the same issues. If I buy a car, for example, the sales guy will definitely watch my gaze and listen to what I say with an ear toward exploiting anything I share with him to increase his odds of selling me a car. We wouldn’t call what the sales guy does a privacy issue, and what “first party” web site tracking directly (without third party services) is doing is no more creepy and no less private than what car sales guys do. If the direct tracking is sold or shared or handled by a third party, then absolutely, huge privacy concerns. But for the direct communication, if you don’t want someone to infer anything about you at all, your only choice is and always has been to not use the service.
aerique 9y ago
I've been using NoScript since forever and one gets used to it. Also, I've always wondered what the use is of tracking which words the mouse is hovering over. I mean who does that: hovering the mouse over words?
- dahart 9y ago
  > who does that: hovering the mouse over words? Lots of people, you’d be surprised. ;) Sometimes I catch myself unconsciously highlighting what I’m reading. But the mouse tracking is for detecting waffling potential button clicks and form fills too. It’s a bad proxy for attention, but it is a proxy that kinda works.
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    Quite often I'll move the mouse pointer out of the way of what I'm reading. So my mouse pointer will be "hovering", but not over anything I'm interested in at all.

dahart 9y ago

I agree with 100% of what you said, the level of tech being used for behavior predictions is scary and the level of tech being used for sales seems like we could be putting all this engineering to better use. OTOH, this seems like natural economics to me given our system, for better or worse. Money is the driver of all things, sadly. Yep, heat maps for mouse movements are a very common technique. You get click location data out of Google Analytics and everyone uses Google Analytics. But we should be clear and careful -- since I'm using the web site, my click data is not something I can ever keep private from the web site. We can (and probably should) keep it from third parties, but first party mouse and keyboard data isn't a privacy concern. Good point about cross-tab tracking, this is fairly common too, and an ad blocker does usually block this. But, the article was primarily about key logging, and the iframed ads can't do any key logging. Don't get me wrong; I use an ad blocker myself, and I think it's a good idea. I just wanted to make the point that blocking only 3rd party content does not solve the problem this article pointed at, and it especially doesn't solve direct key logging or mouse tracking by the website you're using.

pmoriarty 9y ago
"first party mouse and keyboard data isn't a privacy concern" If that data can be used to infer anything about me, it certainly is a privacy concern for me. I think of it like going to a library and instead of freely browsing through the books without being watched, instead being spied on and every book I look at and even where my gaze travels through each book's pages being monitored. This is a paranoid's nightmare level of surveillance, and that's what we're gradually being weaned in to accepting. It certainly is a major privacy concern for me. Ideally, the internet would have been built in such a way as to allow fully private and anonymous use, as it's really nobody's business but your own what you look at, what you're interested in, or what you read. We've helped build the internet in to a spy's paradise, and it's really sad.
- dahart 9y ago
  > I think of it like going to a library and instead of freely browsing through the books without being watched, instead being spied on and every book I look at and even where my gaze travels through each book's pages being monitored. I totally agree and empathize with the increasingly privacy hostile place the internet is. But, that analogy seems a little hyperbolic to me. The library currently does track which books you check out, and maybe fine you when you’re late to return them. They do track which books are popular, in order to figure out what to stock. Some libraries track how their building is being used, and my local library does have cameras. These are all the same kinds of things web sites are doing. It may be more aggressive on a site, and more focused on selling you something, but it’s not fundamentally different. First party sites (not ads) aren’t tracking your gaze or invading your privacy, they’re responding to what you ask for, and using some of the breadcrumbs you leave to improve conversions if they can. Talking to a person face to face has exactly the same issues. If I buy a car, for example, the sales guy will definitely watch my gaze and listen to what I say with an ear toward exploiting anything I share with him to increase his odds of selling me a car. We wouldn’t call what the sales guy does a privacy issue, and what “first party” web site tracking directly (without third party services) is doing is no more creepy and no less private than what car sales guys do. If the direct tracking is sold or shared or handled by a third party, then absolutely, huge privacy concerns. But for the direct communication, if you don’t want someone to infer anything about you at all, your only choice is and always has been to not use the service.

aerique 9y ago

I've been using NoScript since forever and one gets used to it. Also, I've always wondered what the use is of tracking which words the mouse is hovering over. I mean who does that: hovering the mouse over words?

dahart 9y ago
> who does that: hovering the mouse over words? Lots of people, you’d be surprised. ;) Sometimes I catch myself unconsciously highlighting what I’m reading. But the mouse tracking is for detecting waffling potential button clicks and form fills too. It’s a bad proxy for attention, but it is a proxy that kinda works.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  Quite often I'll move the mouse pointer out of the way of what I'm reading. So my mouse pointer will be "hovering", but not over anything I'm interested in at all.