Is Home Depot using webcams to track website visitors?

3 points by Treblemaker 4 years ago | 3 comments

I typically browse in Firefox with ublock0 and noscript. However certain commercial sites require too many holes in the filtering and so I will use Edge in "Private Browsing" mode.

Today while searching for a product at the Home Depot web site, Kaspersky popped up a message that "Microsoft Edge is using the Webcam". I was able to repeat this after closing the browser and then visiting the site again. That electrical tape over the camera proved its value today.

Home Depot has already faced criticism and a lawsuit for using facial recognition in their stores [1] This seems next-level evil. Has anyone else encountered this?

[1] https://www.pbwt.com/data-security-law-blog/home-depot-joins-facebook-and-others-in-facing-suit-for-scanning-faces

version_five 4 years ago |

When I use firefox or chrome for e.g. a google meet call, I have to explicitly allow the browser to use my camera every time in get on a call. Does edge default to automatically allowing a site to use the camera? That would be a bigger concern for me.

josephcsible 4 years ago |

Websites can't use your camera without your browser going along with it, which browsers universally won't unless you give explicit per-site approval.

chiefalchemist 4 years ago |

Could be false positive. Have you tried anything other than Kaspersky? What about using a different PC?

It's the internet. Anything is possible. But one is not a pattern or trend.