What the Internet knows about you

notareal · 6 Sept 2009, 23:26

http://www.whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com

xrok1 · 6 Sept 2009, 23:37

thanks for the spam, but who cares!

Ecuadorian · 6 Sept 2009, 23:56

How come a website can read your browser history?
And I thought Firefox and Chrome were "secure"... holey moley!

Anyway, when going "incognito" in either Chrome or Firefox, that website fails to read your history, so this proves both Google and the Mozilla foundation know this security hole has an easy fix, but haven't done so. Why?

solo · 6 Sept 2009, 23:58

I'm using IE8 and it could only find Google.com , that's all, who knows maybe IE8 is secure.

BTM · 7 Sept 2009, 01:46

@solo said:

I'm using IE8 and it could only find Google.com , that's all, who knows maybe IE8 is secure.

Same with Safari.

Ecuadorian · 7 Sept 2009, 02:14

Thank you! Right now I'm downloading Safari 4 for Windows...

xrok1 · 7 Sept 2009, 02:15

are people seriously worried about this sort of thing? why?

Ecuadorian · 7 Sept 2009, 02:20

It's called Paranoia. Welcome to the Post 9-11 world.

EscapeArtist · 7 Sept 2009, 02:29

@ecuadorian said:

It's called Paranoia. Welcome to the Post 9-11 world.

???

Worried a bout big brother looking over your shoulder?

xrok1 · 7 Sept 2009, 03:01

so they won then?

exactly the intended goal. sorry if i refuse to buy in to it. as far as i'm concerned big brother can come sit on my knee as i surf, compose emails, whatever. as long as their not offended by the occational porn site, we should get along fine.

Ecuadorian · 7 Sept 2009, 03:13

I'm more worried about some site owners knowing you've been frequenting their competitor's site...
And also about criminals knowing which banks you have accounts in just by checking your historial...

xrok1 · 7 Sept 2009, 03:43

you worry, i'll surf, and we'll end up in the same place in the end. i'll just have more freedom than you.

Gaieus · 7 Sept 2009, 10:21

Hm. It saw NO visited websites at all on my machine. True that my FF settings are made to delete all when exiting it.

Alan Fraser · 7 Sept 2009, 10:44

It didn't spot any of my browser history, even though it hasn't been deleted. You might want to check your stealth settings at somewhere like http://www.grc.com/default.htm which includes a load of other useful info. Check via the Shields Up link.
I suspect that the script on that website is merely displaying your history in an alternative form to the usual browser sidebar. You occasionally come across other sites that show the entire contents of your hard drive, but it's just a display trick to get you to buy their phoney security software. They can't actually read your drive...well, not if you've taken sensible precautions anyway.

notareal · 7 Sept 2009, 11:48

xrok1, is this corner bar or what, if this disturbs your daily life, you might not want to open this particular forum - use the freedom you have. I dont see this as paranoija, just curiosity to see how things do work and sometimes one can create unexpected results from it. Feel free to leave tracks of you internet life, but I think it's good to know, if these tracks can be gathered.
But back to the topic... For my understanding it's based to on how browser request the style of visited websites. Nothing is gathered from the computer, the site sends a hidden list of links and then browser ask style for those links. Based on asked style the server knows that you have visited on a website. If history is cleaned or java script is disabled then this does not work.

Coronel · 7 Sept 2009, 14:16

It doesn't matter to me, I know all about them too.

hahaha

dale · 7 Sept 2009, 14:43

Interesting, running Firefox on an old G4 mac it detected Flickr, and facebook.

xrok1 · 7 Sept 2009, 17:41

i didn't know these discussions were limited to one sided discussions. i'm just saying that paranoia breeds paranoia and reason gets lost along the way. paranoia is a much more dangerous form of terrorism IMO.

notareal · 8 Sept 2009, 12:08

@xrok1 said:

i didn't know these discussions were limited to one sided discussions. i'm just saying that paranoia breeds paranoia and reason gets lost along the way. paranoia is a much more dangerous form of terrorism IMO.

I would rather say that paranoia breeds from ignorance and fear. Eighter way it's dangerous. Personally I prefer not to leak my privat information, that includes my web surfing habits - do I suffer paranoia and am I less free? I don't think so.

@xrok1 said:

thanks for the spam, but who cares!

And that was not ment to limit discussion?

You made your point perfectly clear.

Dantheman · 9 Sept 2009, 04:57

form looking at the html I think that it sends your browser hidden links and sees which ones you computer has been to. it then can tell where you have been to.