Some sites literally track your every move, even scrolling and keystrokes, says study

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A study from the Center for Information Technology Policy of Princeton University found that some sites track the user’s every move and information.

According to the center’s affiliated blog Free to Tinker, the study found that when someone visits a website, it can record your mouse movement, keystrokes and scrolling behavior with the help of “session replay” scripts. This information is then sent to third-party servers.

Apart from it, with third-party analytics scripts, the collection of page data such as credit card and medical information may be leaked if a user typed in his or her personal information. It can also lead to online scams.

The study was done by analyzing 482 of 50,000 top sites, per Alexa rankings.

Replay services offer automatic and manual services to redact or exclude information given. However, it would require some “scrub and clean” action to completely erase the data.

The post added that some ad blockers cannot completely filter the scripts, which means that some information can still be recorded despite having been commanded for deletion by the user. Katrina Hallare/JB

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