Facebook could soon collect data from your cursor movements

Move over Facebook collecting your data about your clicks, the websites you visit and the pages you like. The social network seems all set to gather data based on just your cursor movements now.

Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin has told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that the website is trying out several new methods to improve its user-tracking. One of these involve measuring how long a user’s cursor hovers over certain parts of the users’ newsfeed at a given moment. This will include time spent on the mobile screen as well and not just the website.

How long did your cursor hover on that Facebook post?

Essentially, now when you spend time hovering over a Facebook story or an ad, contemplating whether or not to click on it, Facebook will know what you were up to. Using data that is generated by this exercise, Facebook could know several important things like where users prefer advertisements to be placed, which ads did well in pre-click mode but failed to get clicks. This move will also track whether you are actively hovering over your news feed or just idling on the page.

In a statement to CNET, Facebook said, “Like most websites, we run numerous tests at any given time to ensure that we're creating the best experience possible for people on Facebook. These experiments look at aggregate trends of how people interact with the site to inform future product decisions. We do not share this information with anyone outside of Facebook and we are not using this information to target ads."

While this feature may not be in use right away, the decision on collecting data from mouse hovering should be taken within a couple of months, Rudin said. Cue outrage now.