Facebook and Google are keeping tabs on your porn
According to a new study, conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft, that Facebook, Google and Oracle are tracking what porn is being consumed by their users. Even if a person were to enter into 'incognito mode' on their browser, meaning that their results were supposedly not being tracked, they still were, the researchers found.
If you thought Facebook and Google were creepy with how much they know about you — think again. A new study suggests the two companies know what type of porn you watch.
According to the recently published research, researchers have found that Facebook, Google and Oracle are keeping tabs on what porn is being consumed using a tool known as webXray, a tracking tool that sends data back to third parties.
"Our results indicate tracking is endemic on pornography websites: 93 [percent] of pages leak user data to a third-party; the pages that leak data do so to an average of seven domains; 79 [percent] have a third-party cookie (often used for tracking); of the pages with cookies, there is an average of nine cookies; and only 17 [percent] of sites are encrypted, allowing network adversaries to potentially intercept login and password details," researchers wrote in the study.
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Even if a person were to enter into "incognito mode" on their browser, meaning that their results were supposedly not being tracked, they still were, the researchers found.
Using a hypothetical person named "Jack," the researchers note that incognito mode only means the browsing history is not stored on Jack's computer.
"The sites he visits, as well as any third-party trackers, may observe and record his online actions," the study adds. "These third-parties may even infer Jack’s sexual interests from the URLs of the sites he accesses. They might also use what they have decided about these interests for marketing or building a consumer profile. They may even sell the data. Jack has no idea these third-party data transfers are occurring as he browses videos."
The study, which looked at 22,484-sex related sites, was completed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft, which competes with Google and Oracle for cloud computing services.
Google had trackers on 74 percent of the sites, Oracle had trackers on 24 percent and Facebook tracked 10 percent, according to the research.
“The fact that the mechanism for adult site tracking is so similar to, say, online retail should be a huge red flag,” study co-author Elena Maris told the New York Times.
Both Google and Facebook denied the results of the study when asked about it.
In a statement issued to Fox News, Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, said that the company doesn't want adult websites using its business tools, as that would violate the company's community standards. "When we learn that these types of sites or apps use our tools, we enforce against them.," Osborne added.
A Google spokesperson told Fox News: “We don’t allow Google Ads on websites with adult content and we prohibit personalized advertising and advertising profiles based on a user’s sexual interests or related activities online. Additionally, tags for our ad services are never allowed to transmit personally identifiable information to Google.”
Fox News has reached out to Oracle with a request for comment for this story.
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This story has been updated with Facebook and Google's response.
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