Be careful of forms— data is often saved prior to submission (study)
A study recently found that email addresses are "exfiltrated to tracking, marketing and analytics domains before form submission" on many websites. Same goes for passwords. Even Meta and Tiktok do it.
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Can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve seen services market this feature.
Yeah, not surprising. Still, it's crazy that this is legal IMO.
You can say that about the crypto industry too.
But quite frankly, I prefer having a Laissez-faire Internet. I don’t want to need a law degree to understand what I can or can’t do. I don’t want to pay attorneys to draft all sorts of documents for my site to be covered legally.
I just want to be able to just be able to spin up my site and side-projects without worrying about anything. Regulation has costs and raises barriers to entry.
Can't disagree with that.
How can this come as a shock? Of course companies are doing this. Which is probably just fine depending on what they do with the data. Do they use it for research purposes? Or are they going to spam the shit out of you?
Not really a shock... but it shouldn't be happening, regardless of how they use it.
I’ve had this happen to me on an e-commerce website. I added my email to the checkout process but changed my mind and didn’t place the order. Then I started getting emails from the company because I didn’t complete checkout.
That's super shady. I wouldn't purchase from that place again after that, personally.
How to avoid that though? Stop filling out forms altogether?
Hah, yeah just throw away computer! Honestly, I have no idea. Hopefully this study will get some gears in motion to stop these companies from stealing our data.
I am new here, I think this forum is well secured though.
To be clear, I'm talking about forms, not forums.
Like if you're going to buy something online and you start entering you email address, then decide use a different one... both might be captured.
Welcome to the community, btw, it's a great place to be :)
That's messed up.
Agreed.