Another consumer privacy issue in the age of GDPR: Session replay scripts

For companies complying with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it’s not just about a user’s name, email address or cookie.

A recent post from Princeton University researchers points to the practice by some websites of running session replay scripts without telling users:

These scripts record your keystrokes, mouse movements, and scrolling behavior, along with the entire contents of the pages you visit, and send them to third-party servers. Unlike typical analytics services that provide aggregate statistics, these scripts are intended for the recording and playback of individual browsing sessions, as if someone is looking over your shoulder.

The study looked at seven of the most popular session replay providers — Yandex, FullStory, Hotjar, UserReplay, Smartlook, Clicktale and SessionCam. Among the top 50,000 sites on Alexa, 482 employed session replay services.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

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About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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