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Eye tracking can reveal an unbelievable amount of information about you:
Eye tracking technology is starting to pop up more and more, keeping track of where you're looking and how your pupils and irises are reacting for a variety of different purposes. It doesn't require particularly complex technology; a HD video camera that can watch your face is enough to collect the data.
But according to a 2020 research review, this data can divulge an extraordinary amount of information about you when it's crunched through advanced data analysis systems. "Our analysis of the literature," reads the paper's abstract, "shows that eye tracking data may implicitly contain information about a user's biometric identity, gender, age, ethnicity, body weight, personality traits, drug consumption habits, emotional state, skills and abilities, fears, interests, and sexual preferences."
That's not all; "Certain eye tracking measures," says the review, "may even reveal specific cognitive processes and can be used to diagnose various physical and mental health conditions." According to Grandview Research, "the analyzed data is used to study a myriad of psychiatric and neurological conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Schizophrenia, among others."
[...] They can also track the length of fixations, rapid eye motions between fixations, smooth pursuit movements and things like the acceleration and maximum speed of your eye movements.
They can analyze your eyelids, watching how far open your eyes are, how often you're blinking and how long your eyes are staying shut when you do. They can take note of redness and see how watery or dry your eyes are through reflections. They can measure the dilation of your pupils – famously an indication of sexual interest or arousal, but also linked to drug use, fear and certain types of brain damage. They can note your eye color and iris texture.
[...] Biometric identity can be established using a combination of things. The colors and patterns in your irises, for starters, can be used almost like a fingerprint. But so can your pupil reactivity, your gaze velocity and the trajectories your eyes take when following a moving object; mechanical and brain function differences make these things unique to you.
Then there's mental workload – an area in which eye tracking sometimes performs better than an EEG. Pupil dilation can be used as a measure of task difficulty and mental effort. Your blink rate correlates with dopamine levels, signifying learning and goal-directed behavior.
[... The full study – What Does Your Gaze Reveal About You? On the Privacy Implications of Eye Tracking – is available for free at Springer Link.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday April 08 2021, @12:37PM (5 children)
Its interesting to consider what will not be studied.
There's billions, maybe trillions of dollars spent on advertising and every one of those dollars knows they're about 99% useless and they don't want anyone to notice they aren't useful.
Just yesterday I was filling up my car, and the gas pump started displaying a video advertisement to me, very annoying. I found much like web pages, I automatically avoid advertisements so I instinctively looked away and looked around, watching the sunrise just start to light up the horizon. I see other people looking around at the gas station. In the "old days" at oh-dark-thirty when you're filling the gas tank people zombie like stare at the pump numbers or maybe the nozzle waiting for overflow LOL and its interesting how advertising and avoiding advertising forced people to be more aware and look around. Of course someone spent a lot of money to push those video advertisements at us at the gas station and they're likely to be pretty pissed off if its provable that gas pump users ignore them or actively look away. Of course that would result in higher gas prices, so maybe its better to waste money on advertising.
Imagine the absolute shitstorm industry wide if it could be proven nobody is looking at TV commercials.
I also found it interesting they didn't mention the most "obvious" eye related condition, which would be wakefulness / awareness. At some point cars are not going to run unless they notice their driver is wide awake and well rested. And then some rideshare/taxi company is going to start tracking their employee/contractors and doing "something" with the data. And then boring cubicle jobs are going to rate employees based on how awake they appear.
"Attention all employees: To save money, the new bathroom doors at work no longer open unless the eye tracking camera shows you've reached pants-pooping levels of having to go. Also the iris tracker will log (LOL) your bathroom visit and deduct the unproductive time spent from your paycheck."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by isostatic on Thursday April 08 2021, @01:01PM
> Imagine the absolute shitstorm industry wide if it could be proven nobody is looking at TV commercials.
Streaming services seem to make money without commercials. Maybe the solution would be to be happy with the money you're getting without trying to brainwash your customers.
> I automatically avoid advertisements
That's why I stopped getting taxis from JFK into New York - adverts in them. Taxi company/driver loses revenue, I hope they're happy.
> people zombie like stare at the pump numbers or maybe the nozzle waiting for overflow
I often do that, while my brain is thinking of something else. Interrupting that means I go to a different gas station, or am more likely to buy an electric car in future.
Advertising is evil, no question about it. In the UK Sky TV (legacy tv provider) charge a subscription fee. They also have adverts on top of that.
Last time I checked the annual report, the subscription accounts for about 90% of their revenue. The adverts about 10%. So someone spending £20 a month is getting a £2 discount by spending 20 minutes an hour watching adverts for insurance companies or selling gold or whatever. That's a terrible deal for everyone, and one of the reasons I don't have sky.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 08 2021, @05:27PM (1 child)
Advertising destroys every medium it ever touches. Billboards. Newspaper. Magazines. Radio. TV. Cable TV. Mass US Postal Ad mailings. Telemarketing. VHS. DVDs. Usenet spam. Email spam. Web advertising. YouTube. Smart TVs. Once the technology is available, they will want to put ads on the inside of your eyelids.
Next, your Google Home assistant or Amazon Echo will have ads.
Mark my words, eventually your phone lock-screen will have an ad when you first wake up the phone.
If gas pumps already have video ads, it is a sign of worse things to come.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday April 10 2021, @06:56PM
I regret to report "Kindle with special offers" and in Chicago and NYC elevator tv commercials exist, or existed as of a couple years back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08 2021, @06:53PM (1 child)
If advertising isn't effective, what is it, money laundering?
At the very least, companies should be able to measure the impact of advertising on their own sales.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday April 09 2021, @12:13AM
The two things advertising companies are good at selling are themselves and confirmation bias.
Sales went up = Ads Worked, Sales went down = Ads not good enough, spend more.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.