Comments on: SocialHistory JavaScript Determines What Sites You’ve Visited

By: Change

Change — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:39:16 +0000

If they develop a long enough list of sites they could get a good feel for what you visit. I guess it’s not really any worse than Google tracking what search results you click though.

Yes, but they would have to keep you entertained long enough on one page to be able to load this list in the background and do something with it.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:26:37 +0000

David wrote:

I really don’t appreciate this type of information being collected without my knowledge. However, it does not seem to matter if you do not save any browsing history. When I went to the link to see it in action, It did not show any websites. That is because I do not allow Firefox to store any website history.

Very true. If you don’t save your browsing history it won’t have anything to work off of.

Change wrote:

That’s quite an innovative trick! Will be tough to “fix” I imagine. It’s hard to use this maliciously though, so the effects of this technique are not *that* bad for privacy, luckily

It’s not something that can really be exploited, but I still think it could be a privacy concern. If they develop a long enough list of sites they could get a good feel for what you visit. I guess it’s not really any worse than Google tracking what search results you click though.

By: Change

Change — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:06:41 +0000

That’s quite an innovative trick! Will be tough to “fix” I imagine. It’s hard to use this maliciously though, so the effects of this technique are not *that* bad for privacy, luckily

By: David

David — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:04:45 +0000

I really don’t appreciate this type of information being collected without my knowledge. However, it does not seem to matter if you do not save any browsing history. When I went to the link to see it in action, It did not show any websites. That is because I do not allow Firefox to store any website history.