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19 Dec, 2013

Facebook tracks all written messages, posted or not – study — RT USA

Facebook records everything users type on the social networking site, including notes they choose to delete instead of posting, according to a new study that tracked the habits of nearly four million people.

Adam Kramer, a data scientist employed by the social network, studied the profiles of 3.9 million people for the study, dubbed “Self-Censorship on Facebook.” Kramer viewed activity on each profile by monitoring its HTML form element, which is made up of HTML code that changes whenever a user types in their Facebook chat, status update, or other areas where they speak to others.

While Facebook claims it does not track the words that are written in each box, the company is able to determine when characters are typed, how many words are typed, and whether they are posted or deleted. Kramer, with help from student Sauvik Das, spent 17 days tracking “aborted status updates, posts on other people’s timelines, and comments on other posts.”

Read the rest: Facebook tracks all written messages, posted or not – study — RT USA.