We all surf internet without caring about our privacy. Why do you think the cyber crime exists? Why do you think hacktivists turn against the government? The answer to this is PRIVACY. Most of the people today who are not technology oriented doesn’t care about what information they share on Internet. All that matters to them is what they have to search or post. This Article “Internet Surfing: How much you expose yourself” is to show you how much information you provide on the web when you search anything or visit any website. The exposure is more than you think. Google keeps track of your information even when your GPS is off.Google collect data through nearby towers when the phone makes connection through it, the information is sent through WI-FI and hence the location is known.
Recently, one of my friend was posting her location via an application but I asked her why did she do that? And the revolting answer that I got is “what would the people do if they know where am I?”. I was stunned and it got me thinking “Does people really don’t care?”.
Well, I got an answer to that now, It seems such a question can only bug a person who is onto something. A person who would be a Hacker or a person who is doing something against some stupid law!
I wanted to write this article so that I can tell you that when you visit a website, how much exposed you are. A single visit to a website can give the server a lot of information about you such as:
- Your IP-ADDRESS [Public] [obvious!]
- You browser details and your country location
- Your OS version
- Your CPU information
- Can detect Plugins
- Adobe and window media player information
- Your current java version info
Now, If you look at it my way, that is a lot of information that is being given by you! You know, Tor Browsers itself reduces the size of the browser window? It is because some malicious user can figure out your browser resolution and your device screen size, if you visit their website. This is terrifying!!!
It’s all been said now. What we need to know is how do they do it. The information that is being given to the server are via two platforms which are:
- PHP
- Http Headers
- Javascript
- JQuery
PHP is server side, handling the data on the server.The HTTP headers carries a lot of data that can come in handy with the php scripts and we can get that data easily. Javascript on the other hand is client side and hence the OS information, the java version, CPU information and your screen resolution details are obtained by it. It is pretty scary what these scripting languages can do.
A small code is here:
<html>
<h1>Your Details</h1>
<body>
<?php
echo “Your IP address: “.$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’].”<br>”;
?>
<script type=”text/javascript” >
document.write(“Platform:” +navigator.platform + “<br> Useragent : “+ navigator.userAgent);
document.write(“<br>Display resolution : “+screen.width + ” X ” + screen.height);
document.write(“<br>Number of cpu cores are : “+navigator.hardwareConcurrency);
document.write(“<br>Vendor : “+navigator.vendor+”<br>”);
document.write(“<br>OS : “)
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Windows NT 10.0”)!= -1) document.write(“Windows 10”);
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Windows NT 6.2”) != -1) document.write(“windows 8”);
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Windows NT 6.1”) != -1) document.write(“Windows 7”);
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Windows NT 6.0”) != -1) document.write(“Windows vista”)
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Windows NT 5.1”) != -1) document.write(“windows XP”);
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Windows NT 5.0″) != -1) OSName=”Windows 2000”;
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Mac”) != -1) OSName=”Mac/iOS”;
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“X11″) != -1) OSName=”UNIX”;
if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Linux”) != -1) OSName=”Linux”;
</script>
</body></html>
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