Ever wonder how much of your computer's information gets out there?

[ecookman]

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/systeminfo.cgi


i was amazed and kinda shocked when i stumbled that.

[bbi5291]

You can hide this information through proxy servers. This site doesn't seem to work through normal proxies, but browsing through Tor gave an IP in France, Windows XP, Firefox 3.07, and 1000x800 resolution, whereas I have Ubuntu 9.04, Firefox 3.0.11, and 1024x768 resolution. (Of course, this works only if the exit node has the necessary plugins.)

[Zren]

You should also realize that there are databases of ISP's out there so they can basically track where you are from this information. With google maps, it's even easier.

http://www.spyber.com/

[DtY]

All that information is relevant to the web server, it shouldn't surprise anyone.

bbi5291: Firefox also has settings for how much of that information is sent, or you can install an addon to completely spoof it.

[DemonWasp]

All of this information is unsurprising - this information is advertised by your browser because the web server needs to know it to properly serve your request. You can hide or mask this information, but then some websites will respond incorrectly.

Even then, it's not particularly accurate - mine doesn't see Java, which I do have (I even have 1.6.0_14, which is newer than their "latest Linux version" of 1.6.0.07. I also don't have Quicktime (though I suppose I have VLC set up to play QT's files). It also seems to be doing a string-compare on the version values, because it's detecting my Flash version (10.0.22.0) as being less than the "latest Linux version" (9.0.152.0).

It gets the OS / browser / screen resolution right, probably because it's just being told that.

[andrew.]

For me, it says my Java version is 1.5, but it is actually 1.6. Also, it gets a few other things wrong.

[Dan]

I would not recomend hidding this information, alot of it is needed for websites to render corretly (some times there are fixes based on your browser and/or OS done server side). There can also be redirects based on your browser/OS/etc to the correct page that supports it.

Also the Plugin information is usefull to know what version of the application to show you or to tell you to install the plugin. If you hide all that sites might tell you to install the plugin even tho you have it, rather then just show you the application and let you use it.

The only thing there that is realy personal information, is your IP witch can be tracked back to a general area where you are (but not an excact location).

[DtY]

Dan @ Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:18 pm wrote:

The only thing there that is realy personal information, is your IP witch can be tracked back to a general area where you are (but not an excact location).

Unless there's evidence you're doing something illegal, and live in a country where ISPs can be forced to give up your personal information based on your IP address. (Sweden, and I think a few other European countries)

[TheGuardian001]

Not a lot of this surprises me. It's pretty common knowledge that you hand out all the stuff in the top box, major plugins could probably be checked by trying to run something in it (though I'm not sure that'd work), but I was slightly surprised at some of the extra plugins it found.

[DemonWasp]

What is actually a little troubling is this. Basically, it lets you determine what other sites the user has visited, within some given list.

[hotwire]

You know what I don't get? Right now I'm behind a proxy, and with the http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/systeminfo.cgi link I see my proxy address, but with http://www.spyber.com/ I see my real IP address. I've noticed before that most sites like Google and Yahoo will use my proxy IP (eg. it won't be Google Canada but another country if the proxy is from another country), but Bing will always display Bing Canada. It seems Bing has a way of knowing my real IP address like Spyber can. (Which is pretty scary).

Also what kind of proxies do you use? As far as I know there are proxies where you'd type in the IP address in your browser's Connection Settings (but almost all of the IPs I find don't work or are really slow), or web proxies where you type in a URL in their text box (but have lots of banner and popup ads). How do I get a consistently working proxy without ads?

[DtY]

hotwire @ Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:22 pm wrote:

You know what I don't get? Right now I'm behind a proxy, and with the http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/systeminfo.cgi link I see my proxy address, but with http://www.spyber.com/ I see my real IP address. I've noticed before that most sites like Google and Yahoo will use my proxy IP (eg. it won't be Google Canada but another country if the proxy is from another country), but Bing will always display Bing Canada. It seems Bing has a way of knowing my real IP address like Spyber can. (Which is pretty scary).

Also what kind of proxies do you use? As far as I know there are proxies where you'd type in the IP address in your browser's Connection Settings (but almost all of the IPs I find don't work or are really slow), or web proxies where you type in a URL in their text box (but have lots of banner and popup ads). How do I get a consistently working proxy without ads?

Are you behind an anonymizing proxy? Proxies weren't designed to hide your IP address, so non anonymous proxies send your real IP Address as a header, because it's useful to the webserver if more than one person is connecting through that proxy.

[Joel92]

Don't forget, your history can easily be viewed aswell with a little CSS trick

[Tony]

That has already been mentioned above, but it's not done "easily". One can probe to see if a particular link has been previously visited, not get a list of all visited links. With a good list, one could check if the visitor has visited a competitors index page, or attempt to guess at a demographic group; but they wouldn't find your session keys or who you stalk on facebook.