Data mining by websites - another article about another method

[ssfc72]

An interesting security article about software being used on websites to record what you click and type.

https://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/over-400-popular-sites-record-every-keystroke-claims-princeton-study-1778117

Bill

[Jason]

Thanks, Bill. I have to say, I'm not sure what to think of this. I mean, of course, websites keep track of what you type and click on. How else would we be able to interact with them? We click on menu items or links that are sent to the web server to pull up other pages and we type to put information into forms. And analytics is used by advertisers and usability companies to improve websites. We need these things for the internet to work.

I guess the real point though is that data about it is being maintained and may not have user-specific information stripped from it as it is supposed to be. Should this data then be leaked how it could be used for identity theft and other dark purposes. And some of the biggest companies are doing a lousy job of protecting their servers from cybercriminals. We do need to get better at this stuff. I notice that adblockers are mentioned at the bottom, but adblockers take away revenues from websites that need them to survive.

[fox]

I read a good article from one of the emails I got from Pocket about how Google or the owners of a well-used website can determine who you are, where you work and a lot of other details about you from geotracking you and monitoring what you click on.