Turn on the computer, wait a couple minutes for it to load up, click on your internet browser, and enter into a world where anyone can see where you are and what you are doing. Sure, we keep our business and personal life separate right? That is why we have “personal” and “work” computers, but there is a big difference as to how the meaning of “personal” actually is true. You cannot go anywhere now without being taped, you are tracked by purchases and paper trails, and now it seems that the little privacy you had left is gone.
Wish you could put the “History” behind you? After you click on your internet browser and start to surf around the web, everywhere site you visit is recorded and saved, making it very easy for people to find out what you are up to. You might be saying to yourself, “Yes this may be true, but not for me because I am a virtuous person, there is no need to worry about someone finding out my History!” That’s nice, but what we are talking about is the fact that people can get into personal files that could hurt you regardless of the porn sites or other personal adventures that might make you look bad.
Let us say that you use a payment service online that transfers money to your bank account. By the hackers finding out this information, regardless of the fact that reloading the page won’t work, they may have the means to get into that site with your personal log-in information. Feeling scared yet? I am, because I use this very system and preventing something like this is crucial.
Luckily, Google Chrome,?Mozilla? Firefox, and Apple’s Safari have taken these preventive measures by not allowing for JavaScript to run in your browser. Phew!
There is a name for people who snoop around your personal information: history sniffing.At University of California, San Diego, researchers have discovered 485 of the 50,000 of the most popular websites are exploiting a flaw that allows them read your browser’s web history.
Notice how you click on a blue link, revisit the site and the link has turned purple, marking that you have already clicked on this link. What hackers can do is hide links on a certain website, say for example to Facebook or Twitter, then use the spying sites to use JavaScript code to find out the color of the links are.
JavaScript coupled with the use of Cascading Style Sheets, a common website language, make it very easy to track where you have been on the internet. Some of those 485 sites actually download your entire web browsing history! Whether you are doing illegal activities or you are a saint that only uses the internet to write emails, the fact that people can find out this information is kind of creepy. There is no privacy anymore, especially in the computer world, where history hackers are getting into the “trash” and checking out personal files.
Stay protected out there.
