Thousands of websites track user typing

Illustration: SHANA NOVAK/GETTY IMAGES

According to the technology page Wiredamong computer users, it seems that everyone has at least once entered personal information into information forms when booking a hotel, signing up for a newsletter service, doing check-in procedures- print online….

Every now and then, information correction due to mistyped information often occurs, and most of us believe that the data will only be saved when we press the “submit” button. However, that’s not always the case.

Recently, researchers from KU Leuven University (Belgium), Radboud University (Netherlands) and University of Lausanne (Switzerland) have published the results of a remarkable new study. They discovered that a fair number of websites are collecting data from users when they enter online forms even before the user has clicked submit.

The research team analyzed the top 100,000 popular websites, observing the scenarios that occur when a user visits a website in the European Union or the United States.

They found that 1,844 websites had collected EU users’ email addresses without the user’s knowledge, and 2,950 sites had collected US users’ emails in some form.

Some websites do not seem to collect user data intentionally, but because 3rd party marketing and analytics services are used, similar data collection has occurred.

Professor Güneş Acar, also a researcher in the digital security group of Radboud University, one of the scientists who led the above study, said he was surprised by the discovery. “We thought we’d probably find a few hundred sites that collect users’ emails before they send them out, but this beats all of our estimates so far,” Acar said.