Thousands of Websites Collect Everything You Type

According to Ars Technica, a study conducted by KU Leuven, Radboud University Nijmegen, and the University of Lausanne has revealed that thousands of websites collect every character users type. The research team analyzed the 100,000 largest websites and found that 1,844 sites collect email addresses without user consent in the EU, and this number rises to 2,950 in the United States.

In many cases, websites do not do this intentionally, but rather transmit information through third-party tools used for marketing and analytics. According to the researchers, 52 sites were found to collect passwords. Fortunately, the researchers contacted the owners of all these sites, and in every case, password collection was stopped.

A similar situation was found with Meta and TikTok pixel tags, which are used to track user activity across different sites by using a hidden version of their email address. The researchers discovered that 8,438 U.S. websites leaked user data to Meta, and 154 to TikTok.

In addition to publishing their article, the research team will present their findings at the Usenix Security ’22 conference in August.

Previously, it was reported that Facebook does not know exactly where and how user data is used or where it goes. Company specialists compared the data within their system to a bottle of ink poured into a lake—they do not know how to collect user data back into the bottle or make it flow only to the desired parts of the “data lake.”