Comment by 🌲 Half_Elf_Monk

=> Re: "Tracking Emoji? 😱" | In: s/privacy

Thanks for the replies. I'm wondering if I can locate the font files on my device to verify that the emoji are being pulled from a local source. Also I suppose it'd be good ot make sure that (on android) the keyboard is pulling those locally, rather than from a 3rd party cdn. (what data gets sent with the request? the whole sentence? the context? just the image needed? idk.) Anyways thanks again.

=> 🌲 Half_Elf_Monk [OP]

2024-11-16 · 2 months ago

1 Later Comment

=> 💀 requiem · Nov 18 at 12:41:

Emojis are basically Unicode characters, and the visual representation is done on the client's side, usually depending on what fonts you use. So it's not possible to track anyone using emojis like you would with tracking pixels.

The only way emojis are "useful" for tracking is that it's really really easy to do sentiment analysis of text that has emoji. I reckon that was one of the reasons that it was invented in the first place. It can be very useful for profiling individuals or even tracking their mood.

But no, you cannot track people with emojis the same way you track them with images, because the image resources are not loaded from the internet.

Original Post

=> 🌒 s/privacy

Tracking Emoji? 😱 — Tracking pixels are problematic, since loading them gives away information about browsing habits that... we don't want to give away. It's just an image though. There are lots of images, and they don't need to be 1x1 blank pixels. What about emoji? Are the images stored locally? Or do they (and reaction .gifs, etc) download from somewhere, based on some ID from a unicode character map? Is there some /path/to/emoji/data/ on my hard drive? How does that work, and are any of...

=> 💬 Half_Elf_Monk · 4 comments · 2024-11-15 · 2 months ago