Web Browsers' 'Visited' Feature Creates Privacy Concerns

Courtesy Techdirt  Thu, 06/19/2008 - 09:22

Ben Adida points to an interesting hack that takes advantage of a bug/feature (depending on your perspective) of modern browsers .

When a webpage is rendered, the browser will typically display links that have been previously visited in a different color.

Under the hood, this is implemented by setting the link's style to "visited." A website can use JavaScript to detect this information and report it back to the server -- and could even do something sneaky like adding...

Sponsors


 

Related items

Google Shores Up Email Security With Contacts API
Anyone who's visited more than a handful of "social networking" sites have come across one that asks you to give it the password to your...

New powers for state snoopers on the net
The government is drawing up plans to give sweeping new powers to the security and intelligence agencies, and other public bodies, allowing them to...

Widget Arms Race: Gigya Takes the Worldwide Lead
Widget platform Clearspring turned some heads last month when it said that it would have reach equivalent to the “7th largest web property”...

Taking the Social Networking Plunge
As the job market continues to sour, it is important to take advantage of all available tools to keep up with your personal and professional network....

How to Manage Your Social Profiles and Create Virtual Business...
How many online profiles do you think you have right now? I know, too many to even count! Such is the case with anyone that uses Web 2.0 sites these...


 

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
computer-internet.marc8.com