Every Keystroke You Make: A Tech-Law Measurement and Analysis of Event Listeners
6 hours ago
- #web-tracking
- #wiretapping
- #privacy
- The study conducts a tech-law analysis to map U.S. wiretapping laws to web tracking, focusing on JavaScript event listeners used by third-party trackers.
- Findings reveal that 38.52% of top-million websites use third-party event listeners to intercept keystrokes, with 3.18% transmitting intercepted data to third-party servers.
- Intercepted data, such as email addresses, is sometimes used for unsolicited email marketing.
- The research highlights the potential for wiretapping laws to provide statutory private right of action in privacy harm cases.
- Future legal research is needed to determine when observed wiretapping crosses the threshold into illegality.