Who's tracking you online? This app can tell you - and stop them

via digitaltrends.com

If you hate targeted ads, the Internet can be a very frustrating place. Online juggernauts like Twitter, Facebook, and Google keep developing partnerships with third-party sites that track your every mouse hover, all while developing native tracking programs. The goal: targeting you for ads with scary accuracy, and even if the objective is peddling wares and not peeping at your personal life, it’s at least invasive and at most a gross abuse of power. And the companies keep introducing new ways to bombard you, like how Facebook is testing targeted ads in its Graph Search and tightening its partnerships with third-party trackers.

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Your Smartphone Is Tracking You In Ways You've Never Imagined - Video

via businessinsider.com

Our phones have become an integral part of our lives, and have fundamentally changed the way we work, the way we navigate the world, and the way we communicate with friends and family.

But do smartphones with all their interactive, location, and connectivity features and apps compromise our privacy and information security?

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The Basics of Online Tracking

via techi.com

There are two sad realities about online tracking. One reality is that the majority of people have their online activities tracked on nearly every website that they visit and these tracking protocols have very little oversight, nearly no rules associated with them, and can be stored indefinitely by anyone, even sites or companies that you’ve never visited. The other sad reality is that everyone has the ability to stop the tracking, but it would mean doing things that few are willing to do.

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Samsung Galaxy S IV May Scroll Using Eye-Tracking

via www.gadgetell.com">technologytell.com

Samsung’s Galaxy S IV will feature software that uses eye tracking to scroll content on the screen, according to a report from the New York Times on Monday. When the phone senses that readers’ eyes have reached the bottom of the screen, it will page up the content on the screen so that users don’t have to swipe, the report says.

NYT points out that Samsung filed a trademark in Europe this past January for the term “Eye Scroll,” and it trademarked “Samsung Eye Scroll” in the US in February. The US application describes the service as “software having a feature of sensing eye movements and scrolling displays of mobile devices, namely, mobile phones, smart phones, and tablet computers according to eye movements.” The term “Eye Pause” was also trademarked in the US, but the application states only that the service is “software for smart phones and tablet computers.”

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Samsung Galaxy S4 Rumors Begin With A Video And An Eye Scroll

via readwrite.com

For a smartphone with as much hype and anticipation as Samsung’s Galaxy S4, we know surprisingly little about it. We know that it is likely to launch on March 14th at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. We know that Samsung will have a huge marketing plan around it and worldwide distribution on a mammoth scale.

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Researchers use facial muscle tracking to predict how addictive games will be

via extremetech.com

Video games, like most other creative endeavors, require a large investment in time and money. To increase the odds of recouping costs and making a profit, game developers often use focus groups to see if the game is going in the right direction. Traditionally, that involves watching uninitiated people play the game with limited contextual information. Then, a series of questions are asked to gauge what the players liked and disliked. Now, Taiwanese researchers at the Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University are using electromyography (EMG) to track small muscle movements in the faces of the focus group members. From there, they can estimate how much fun, and how addictive, the gameplay is.

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Yes, Facebook Has Its Own Location Tracking App In The Works

via readwrite.com

Facebook may already know a lot about our daily habits - where we check in, what we buy, who we hang out with - but it might be on the cusp on knowing exactly where we are in real-time. A new report out of Bloomberg claims that Facebook is working on its own equivalent of Apple's Find My Friends app - or Google's Latitude, for the more Android-inclined among us.

Bloomberg's report suggests that new Facebook app would "track the location of users" and is set to launch in mid-March - but it's otherwise extremely light on detail. The story neglects to mention that the company rolled the very same thing last June in the form of "Find Friends Nearby" - a hackathon-born mobile feature which the company released and rescinded within hours. And it cites Highlight rather than Facebook-owned Glancee as one of this new(ish) class of constant location tracking apps.

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Facebook's Plan To Kill The Tracking Cookie

via businessinsider.com

Facebook product manager David Baser gave a nice, detailed interview to AdExchanger in which he revealed that Facebook has a plan that, if successful, will make the infamous tracking cookie look like a second class relic of history.

Cookies are the little bits of code that advertisers drop onto web users' browsers in order to follow them around the web and target them with relevant ads. They don't identify users specifically, but they do identify your interests based on the sites you look at.

Facebook, however, is working on something much more targeted. Baser calls it "Optimized CPM." (Cost per thousand, or "mille," is a standard ad-pricing measurement.)

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How Companies Track You on the Web [Infographic]

via inspirationfeed.com

Have you even pondered about how you’re being tacked online? In real life it would be like having a couple of creepy dudes in rain coats following you around where ever you go, and writing down what you do. Pretty weird right? Some people don’t really care that they’re being watched, however others are quite frankly pissed to not have the privacy that they deserve. The following infographic does a great job of telling you how companies are tracking you on the web and making money from it.

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How to Stop Apple From Tracking You Again in iOS 6

via gizmodo.com

Business Insider is reporting that Apple's launch of iOS 6 brings with it not just Passbook and bad maps, but a new means of tracking user activity, too. That's right; your iPhone tracks your every activity by default. Here's how to stop it.

The report suggests that Apple has started tracking users again so advertisers can target them, using a new technology called "identifier for advertisers " (IFA). A random, anonymous number assigned to a user and their device, IFAs are temporary and can be blocked like cookies.

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Stop Advertisers Tracking iPhone - Video

via businessinsider.com

It's no surprise that advertisers can track your every move on your iPhone. But if you have an iPhone 5 or an Apple gadget running iOS 6, you can prevent advertisers from gaining access to your personal information.

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We Could Control Future Computers and Video Games Using a 3D Motion Tracking Wristband

via gizmodo.com

The Wii Introduced the masses to motion-based gaming. The Kinect took things one step further and all but eliminated controllers. Microsoft's latest innovation, an infrared tracker which is worn on the wrist, could make gaming and UI controls even more immersive than before.

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How To Stop Facebook From Tracking You

via businessinsider.com

Most people don't realize that Facebook can continue to monitor their internet activity, even if they are no longer logged into the site.

Using "Facebook Connect," and other social pulg-ins, Facebook is able to set up a cookie on any site that has a "Like" or "share" button, giving Facebook access to a startling amount of user information. Technically, the purpose of these plug-ins is to authenticate users, but it still has the ability to collect personal information such as the IP address of your computer, browsing data, outside login information, phone numbers, etc.

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This Is How Facebook Is Tracking Your Internet Activity

via businessinsider.com

Facebook really is watching your every move online.

In testing out a new diagnostic tool called Abine DNT+, we noticed that Facebook has more than 200 "trackers" watching our internet activity.

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Many U.S. mobile users turn off tracking over privacy concerns

via theglobeandmail.com

There are new fears that America’s smartphone revolution is making collateral damage of consumer privacy.

Nearly 20 per cent of adult mobile users in the U.S. say they have deliberately switched off the location tracking feature on their phones over worries that other people or companies could obtain their geographic information, according to a new report.

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