Is anyone actually surprised by this?

  • grey_maniac@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    60
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    I’m confused. Isn’t “collecting keystroke data” just an alarmist way to describe text entry?

    • uis@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      19 hours ago

      Not exactly. Timing between key presses can be used to identify people.

      • grey_maniac@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 hours ago

        I am literally so paranoid I regularly vary my keysteoke rhythms and explore polyrhytmic techniques to create variations. Not even joking.

    • tux@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Not usually. Keystroke info is different than text input, like if you didn’t click onto any field and typed it would only be captured if keystroke are all being grabbed. It’s especially scary if you keep the app running in the bg and then type something and it still captures it. Not saying they’re doing that, but the privacy policy says they might.

      The rhythm part is annoying, it’s commonly used to ID people even through things like ad blocks and dns blocks. Could also (in theory) be used to capture what people are typing just by hearing how they type.

    • noisefree@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      Maybe. They could also be doing things like paying attention to input cadence and typos/pre-send typo corrections to use as part of a fingerprint associated with the identifying information a user gives them when creating an account so that they can then attempt to detect the user elsewhere on the web whether they are using an identifying account or not.