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Over 400 of the World's Most Popular Websites Record Your Every Keystroke (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The idea of websites tracking users isn't new, but research from Princeton University released last week indicates that online tracking is far more invasive than most users understand. In the first installment of a series titled "No Boundaries," three researchers from Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) explain how third-party scripts that run on many of the world's most popular websites track your every keystroke and then send that information to a third-party server. Some highly-trafficked sites run software that records every time you click and every word you type. If you go to a website, begin to fill out a form, and then abandon it, every letter you entered in is still recorded, according to the researchers' findings. If you accidentally paste something into a form that was copied to your clipboard, it's also recorded. These scripts, or bits of code that websites run, are called "session replay" scripts. Session replay scripts are used by companies to gain insight into how their customers are using their sites and to identify confusing webpages. But the scripts don't just aggregate general statistics, they record and are capable of playing back individual browsing sessions. The scripts don't run on every page, but are often placed on pages where users input sensitive information, like passwords and medical conditions. Most troubling is that the information session replay scripts collect can't "reasonably be expected to be kept anonymous," according to the researchers.
How about a list please, a useful list, name of company, data stolen, scripts and cookies to be killed upon a slow smouldering flame. How can you say 400 without having a list of the 400. That 400 players to add to noscript and cookiemonster.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
As one of the links even mentions, Facebook was caught doing the same with status updates (recording everything you type, even if you delete it before posting) back in 2013. What's news here is the extent to which websites are doing this these days.
For years now I've been operating under the assumption that websites collect as much data on user interaction as possible, even including things like what links you mouse over (not necessarily click on), how long you spend reading content before moving on, and how long the cursor remains on different parts of the page. This is yet one more reason why I never browse without NoScript and uBlock Origin. Fortunately, as reported in the first link:
Does tracking protection help?
Two commonly used ad-blocking lists EasyList and EasyPrivacy do not block FullStory, Smartlook, or UserReplay scripts. EasyPrivacy has filter rules that block Yandex, Hotjar, ClickTale and SessionCam.
Now that this practice is getting a little more attention, here's hoping that more of these sites will be added to popular blocklists.
I have a nervous habit of idly swirling the mouse around while I read, and I've long suspected that sites were logging these movements. So, it's a habit that I've never tried to break, but rather I've been hoping that by passing the cursor over all sorts of page elements hundreds of times in the course of a few minutes, I'm screwing with their data collection somehow.
You're getting dangerously close to summoning him.
The list of websites:
https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/no_boundaries/session_replay_sites.html
https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/no_boundaries/session_replay_sites.html
Previously I would have said NoScript
Use it again. NoScript has been released for Firefox 57.
These days websites also use HTML5's canvas fingerprinting to identify your computer. If there's a way to gather any useful information, to be used for marketing, it'll happen. Check out Canvas Defender. You can change your machines white noise at will to help mask it's identity. It's really a bit sad that all this crap goes on.
Let's suppose that there are no malicious uses of web tracking, that it is solely used to improve the user experience. There's still a big problem, which is that a lot of software developers are just incompetent when it comes to security. And sorry to break it to you, but your post proves that you're one of them.
If you don't see the problem with a key logger on a site that contains a password field, and then sending those logged keys to a third-party, and through unencrypted channels, then you need to be fired from your job as a web dev asap.
Looking at the number of sites that use anti-patterns (malicious UIs designed to trick the user) I'd say you have lived a very sheltered life.
Getting you to buy more stuff IS abuse in many cases. Jacking up prices because your page view times and mouse hover positions suggest that you will pay 10% more is also abuse, and spying. It's creepy AF.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC