What can Internet sites see on your PC?

[18greens]

I was curious.

If you have a firewall on your PC and set security and privacy in the tools>internet options to maximum can people still see your PC. If you look at a web site does it even know you are there.?

Or are these security settings just giving you a false feeling of security. Can the devious still get into your PC and read the credit card numbers bank details etc from your last purchase.

[Memetic]

Quite a lot.

For example have a look at this image:

http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg

See anything you recognise? :D Not my code - I wish I were that talented. See www.danasoft.com for how it was done.


The server has has to know you are "there" in some way in order to be able to send you the information you have requested, i.e. the code your browser will read to render the page on your display.

Now where "there" is is another question entirely, if you are really concerned about security there are all sorts of proxy services that can make you appear to be comming form somewhere that you are not.

As far as accessing your PC fro the outside goes, if you have a hardware firewall doing all the usual stuff, plus a software firewall (e.g. ZoneAlarm) - especailly if you are using a wireless network, run good up to date anti-virus / anti trojan software, are careful about unsolicited email attachments, don't install software you don't trust and are running all the latest patches for the operating system & all of your software you are probably as safe as you can expect to be and still have usable access.


To test your firewall have a look at:

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

and

http://www.grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

18greens,

Every time you post on PPRuNe, your IP is logged and for advertising statistics, even the country which you are in is logged too. :eek:

Take Care,

Richard

[Rupert S]

Essentially, firewalls block out unwanted incoming connections. The above script is a good example. A server can log your ip address, operating system and the browser you are using. The ip address can be used in a "Whois" scan (you can do one yourself at www.tools-on.net ) which will come up with a hostname, your location, isp and possibly some personal details but unlikely to be that specific.

[Voidhawk]

http://gemal.dk/browserspy/ has quite an extensive list. I think it covers just about everything that can be passed on to a website.

Their CSS Exploit Information (http://gemal.dk/browserspy/css.html) was new to me. Quite an interesting one.

[18greens]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Very interesting.

[Keef]

Fascinating, Memetic - that's my Pipex IP address too. Are we all on the same one?

Edited: it's reading the incoming. We know they can do that - it's in the header of all my e-mails, too.

[Memetic]

Keef - funny how as we are conditioned to think of images as static online seeing something built on the fly can get the brain working.

Re "incomming" as far as the internet is concerned you would usually have only one IP address, so it is both incomming and outgoing.

Your PC itself could have more than one IP address depending on the number of network cards and how your network is set up.