A study by Princeton researchers came to light earlier this month, revealing that more than 400 of the world’s most popular websites use the equivalent of hacking tools to spy on you without your knowledge or consent.
So before you get all hopped up on eggnog and go hogwild doing your Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping, you might want to find out which sites are seriously spying on you.
Using “session replay scripts” from third-party companies, websites are recording your every act, from mouse moves to clicks, to keylogging what you type and extracting your personal info off the page. If you accidentally paste something into a text field from your clipboard, like an address or password you didn’t want to type out, the scripts can record, transmit and store that, too.
What these sites are doing with this information, and how much they anonymize or secure it, is a crapshoot.
Among top retail offenders recording your every move and mistake are Costco, Gap.com, Crate and Barrel, Old Navy, Toys R Us, Fandango, Adidas, Boots, Neiman Marcus, Nintendo, Nest, the Disney Store, and Petco.