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You Are What You Click
Ksop writes: "Predictive Networks Inc. sells a product that can identify users by recognizing their input patterns. The way you use the mouse and keyboard may be used to track you. Story
here. That scares me a little. But its also a cool idea."
This is an interesting offshoot of general biometrics research.
Fortunately, in order for it to work, the user needs to be running the tracking software on their computer. Most users will be leary of programs which spy on their input, so the probability of them installing the spyware is very small.
However, there is the possibility that this could be snuck into programs that have other uses and spy on users without their knowledge. (Didn't Comet Cursor do this?) Of course someone will discover it eventually, publicize it, and then be sued by the company for violation of the DMCA. So we're all screwed.
Welcome to the new dark ages. Have a nice day.
How the heck is that supposed to work? gl_texturemode simply sets the mipmapping mode for textured polygons. Unless there's a universal bug in OpenGL implementations (seems unlikely to me), simply switching mipmapping modes isn't going to make polygons transparent or turn wireframe. At best, it'll increase your frame rate slightly, depending on your graphics card (GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST reads texels from only one mip level, which saves you a read cycle over GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR, which reads from two mip levels).
What's really going on here?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Will they be able to tell I am typing with only one hand?
-josh
I still have an article from an old magazine (80's) with a basic program which accepts a password, and times the interval between keypresses. When a different user types in the same password it was able to determine that it was not the same person, while still accepting the original user.
Long live Basic!
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
For us, sure. But what about those who don't know what they're buying? For those who don't even get the chance to opt out?
The scariest moment I had last year was when I went and helped fix a co-worker's Dell machine. "It crashes when we read our email".
Out-of-the-box, it had "built-in" Internet through AT&T. I don't know what it used for a browser, but it wasn't IE or Nutscrape. It was this little goofy window with big buttons and, of course, constantly-refreshing banners. If I hadn't known better, I'd have sworn it was AllAdvantage or some other free-if-you-look-at-the-ads thing. Nope - they swore up and down that "this is how it came, this is how they told us to read our email", and showed me their monthly bill for internet access.
(The reason they couldn't read their mail was that one of the *advertising* partners had spammed them - with gobs of HTML - and the retarded email client blew up on a buffer overflow when it tried to render the HTML in the Subject: header. As if I didn't need any other excuse to tell them that privacy-invasion is the default, not the exception.
I never thought I'd say that I felt good about seeing someone run Outbreak Excess and IE5. But after a couple of hours of patches, they were at least able to read mail using the client they were used to using at work, and browse the web without being tracked any more than normal.
It was a real wake-up call for me. I'd recommend any /.er walk over to a Gateway Country booth or talk to a clueless-newbie friend (you may have to ask your friends to introduce you to their friends to find one! ;-) who just got a new Dell "with all the goodies already set up".
Would I need Xanax if something like Predictive's technology comes pre-installed on WinXP? (Well, I suppose not, because I'd rather eat a pound of broken glass, shit it all out, and roll in the resulting mess until I bled to death than run XP.)
But when someone says "it doesn't hurt children", they usually mean because I'm trying to distract you from the fact that it was designed to hurt you.
Well, then, I guess if it's designed not to harm the pwecious chylllldrun, it's OK!
Way to go, Mr. Hosea! You're a really swell guy! I mean, now that you've told me you won't use it to hurt chillllldrun, I think it's really awesome that you can can monitor my mouse-gesture and record my every keystroke! After all, isn't any privacy invasion justified as long as the invader promises that not a single chyuld is harmed?
(Yeah, Hosea, and the rest of his scumbag marketroids, I've got a fuckin' gesture for you, and it's got nothin' to do with my mouse.)
if you use your left hand.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
That's a lot more useful to advertisers.
I do wonder how they're going to get access to all that information unless the browser program itself provides it, though. Maybe with a plug-in that nominally performs some other function while secretly monitoring the keyboard & mouse? Of course, it's a lot easier in the interactive TV application - presumably, they just get the box manufacturer to release a "software update"...
Next thing ya know, someone will develop a program for CounterStrike servers that can track players' movement, aiming, and keystrokes, that can tell the server admins if they're using binds to things like:
"gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR;bind r gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST;"
In case you're curious, that's the switch command necessary for the OpenGL wallhack that's freely available.
On the bright side, though, that would be rather neat. The server admins would once and for all know who was and who wasn't cheating on their servers, though I figure all the privacy advocates would go apeshit over it.
As for this technology, however, it's not like this is anything new. Didn't DoubleClick.net have something like this going that would track what sorts of banners you would click on as well as what sites you visit such that they can tailor their ads to your preferences to attempt to get you to click on them?