Mouse tracking (also known as cursor tracking) is the use of software to collect users' mouse cursor positions on the computer. This goal is to automatically gather richer information about what people are doing, typically to improve the design of an interface. Often this is done on the Web and can supplement eye tracking in some situations. When mouse tracking takes place without the user's consent, for example on a website, there may be privacy implications. History The computer mouse was first invented in 1968 by Douglas Engelbart. The term mouse tracking originally referred to how movements were captured and transmitted to the computer. For example, the original tracker ball mouse used a metal bearing pressed against two rollers to track movement. Much research and technology has gone into what type of tracker provides the most accurate depiction of the user's movement. With the advent of the World Wide Web, mouse tracking was expanded to include click data. Researchers and developers would track and record each time a user used the mouse to click something on the website, as well as the location of the event. Web developers use these mouse clicks to assess what information users are interested in and how they interact with a page. Additionally, advertisers are interested in click data in terms of banner advertisements and where to place their ads on pages to get the most click-throughs. More recently, the term mouse tracking has been expanded even more to develop a much broader area of research in helping understand the human-computer interaction (HCI). This development began with eye tracking. While eye tracking has been around since the 1800s, it was not used in HCI until the 1980, primarily to help answer questions about how users search for commands in computer menus and to develop systems to help disabled users. More recently, eye tracking has been used in usability testing on web pages to understand a user's point of focus as well as test the usability of different features of a site, such as dropdown menus. This information can influence Web design so it meets the researcher's goals yet is user friendly. The problem with using eye tracking in usability testing is the required hardware and then expense. Additionally, eye tracking is limited to small sample sizes and abnormal browsing environments. Mouse tracking, on the other hand, is inexpensive and the data can be collected from