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'ClickClickClick' Site Reveals How Much Browsers Know About Your Online Behavior (news.com.au)
mi writes: The site called ClickClickClick annotates your every move on its one and only page. Turn on the sound to listen to verbal annotations in addition to reading them. The same is possible for, and therefore done by, the regular sites as they attempt to study visitors looking for various trends -- better to gauge our opinions and sell us things. While not a surprise to regular Slashdotters, it is certainly a good illustration... Dutch media company VPRO and Amsterdam based interactive design company Studio Moniker have created the site to remind online users about the "serious themes of big data and privacy." Studio Monkier designer Roel Wouters said, "It seemed fun to thematize this in a simple and lighthearted way."
Since I block all this crap, all I get is error messages.
just like my post :P
Now, if it could illustrate something dramatically different and on a higher level than the very technical cursor moves and clicks, normal internet users might also find it interesting. "I moved 100px left? Well, duh, I know that."
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
but is that really all they can figure out ?
It didn't reveal much? Guessed the number of CPU cores wrong (says four, I've got two but perhaps it counts hyperthreading?). Using Firefox with an adblocker, on a Mac.
It could've done OS and browser fingerprinting, show possible location based on IP, shown a number of social networks that I usually log into, etc.
Somewhat disappointed actually :) Or perhaps relieved :)
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Let Google do the same :
* Your credit card number is 5500 4567 3436 7804
* You spent $3754.17 on Amazon in 2016
* Your coordinates are 39.2904 N, 76.6122 W
* Your dad has undiagnosed cancer since may 2016.
* Your wife cheated on you yesterday. Twice! At 39.166537, -76.624614 and 39.204198, -76.655321, with Google users #5465487874 and #497987544
Have a nice day, and remember : "don't be evil"!
"Looking at subjects timezone, he probably should be at work!"
:-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Better even: go into about:config and gut as much javascript functionality as possible. That's my default profile.
For pages that insist on javascript (and which I have to use: not many, perhaps once, twice a month) I use a throwaway profile.
I trust my browser... only a bit. I'd prefer a proxy (independent from my browser) to do the gutting, something akin to Privoxy. Some day I'll be there (this proxy could, e.g. instead of dropping cookies and single-pixel-parasites, just send some phantasy values (or even better: pick a random value from an aggregator).
who really runs javascript from unknown sites?
Roughly 99% of internet users. About 0.2% deliberately disable javascript. That data is from 2013. A quick search didn't bring up anything more recent, but I doubt there's been a humongous sway in javascript use among the general populace. Keep in mind that Slashdot users such as us are, almost by definition, not representative of the average internet user; just because it's common amongst your circle to disable javascript by default, doesn't mean that's common for everyone else.
Color me unimpressed. It tells me I moved my mouse on its page. It tells me when I click on its page. I would surely hope a web page gets those events. It does not seem to tell the user about all the fingerprinting information it can get, or much about cookies, beyond the fact that it sets one.
Embarrassing: it actually gets some things wrong, like the saying that I moved the mouse to the upper left (when I did not).
The idea is good, but the implementation seems to be pretty limited...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
ClickClickClickBait
Hey, how did it find out about the body? Hmm, I'd better cover my traces.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
All I get is a blank white page with a little spinning cursor.
Yet another reason why i love uMatrix
I mean who really runs javascript from unknown sites?
Everyone who wants the internet to work without babying it. So pretty much everyone. Heck for most people administering an adblocker is too much effort.
The "classical" web experience was that the user was always, and easily, aware that there wasn't "the" machine, but two machines: the browser and the server. And you were only interacting with someone else's computer who serves their interests over yours, when you request a page, submit a form, etc.
Web 2.0 is that the browser runs javascript and therefore your own computer is their agent, using your electricity and hardware on their behalf, sometimes in direct conflict with your own interests. That might be pretty freaky to a time traveller from the 1990s or early 21st century. 1995 Guy would be laughing, "There's no way people are going to tolerate that." Decades later, many of us still think of our computers as ours and might not remember (*) that the modern web-browsing experience is very compromising.
(*) Or maybe a more accurate way to put it, is that we're living in denial.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It's good you're using free software, and you should use more of it (preferring a free software OS and a computer that runs nothing but a free OS with free software on top of it). But you shouldn't feel relieved. Just because your browser got things wrong in this test doesn't mean your proprietary (therefore untrustworthy-by-default) OS will fail too. People visit these sites and erroneously think they're safer using a proprietary OS to run their free software browser (or worse, they endorse a proprietary browser written by a company known to spy on its users). I'm guessing you chose MacOS for some convenience. You should know that software in control of the keyboard, mouse, camera, and mic find that a convenient choice for their interests too.
Digital Citizen
Seize control. You are the operator. You do as you wish with the pages/files that others publish. They are broadcast and offered unconditionally; any implicit obligation to obey their server's instructions to fetch+load extra data (ie ads), or even (God help you) execute things, on YOUR machine is to be done at your operator's discretion.
Row row, fight the power.