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Yes you read that right, you could be. You’ll be happy to know that I’m not the one spying on you today (maybe tomorrow :-P). I know a lot about Internet security but I had no idea that this was possible. Did you know that you can actually “record” visitors actions on a website? I don’t just mean what they clicked on, I mean actually watch where they moved their mouse and what they clicked on. You can even watch how people filled out forms!

Now this could be great news for you if you own a website…and if not, well you’ll just have to keep an open mind to how secure your actions are from now on. One thing you should always remember is that while you usually surf the Internet at home, the Internet is a public place and you should always be cautious about what you do on it. It’s not just a play area, actions still have consequences, laws are still in effect.

Now, if you own a website, you can sign-up for a free account on RobotReplay and get to work! I want to tell you about some benefits of RobotReplay. If you don’t own a website, don’t think of RobotReplay as a hindering experience. It can actually help a website owner make your browsing experience better in the future. If you own a website, you can learn a lot from your visitors. Probably the most important thing you can see is how people navigate your site and whether or not your site has a good design for what you’re trying to accomplish. Are visitors seeing what you want them to see? Are people reading your articles or are they lost trying to find them? Maybe someone was reading your article and at the end of it, they went back up to re-read a confusing part…you could see that you might want to do some editing to your article.

RobotReplay is very simple to use. Basically they host a JavaScript file on their site that you link to from your’s. They give you a simple code to put into your HTML files after you sign-up and after that you can start tracking! It’s quite amazing that a simple JavaScript file hosted on another site can do so much (that’s why file security on your web server is so important to prevent unauthorized access to trojan files and viruses).

I thought people watching your mouse movements was scary, but then I thought a lot about it. My conclusion was that no one’s really going to see anything personal from you. When a website owner looks back at recordings of visitors to his or her website, they’re not going to know you from another person. Even if you were filling out a form, who cares? What are they gaining from seeing you type? Unless of course you’re bad at spelling haha. I think in the end, this proves to be a great tool to help website owners improve their site’s navigation or other problems and will just benefit the end-users in the long run.

Check out the following video for a demo of RobotReplay.

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