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Is there a function or website that can collect and display ALL of the user information that can be obtained via a browser?

Background:

  • This of course does not account for the significant cross-reference abilities of large corporations to collate multiple sources and signals from users across various properties, but it's a first step.

  • Ghostery is just a great idea; to show people all of the surreptitious scripts that run on any given website. But what information is available – what is the total set of values stored – that those scripts can collect from?

  • If you login to a search engine and stay logged in but leave their tab, is that company still collecting your webpage viewing and activity from other tabs? Can past or future inputs to pages be captured – say comments on another website? What types of activities are stored as variables in the browser app that can be collected?

  • This is surely a highly complex question, given to countless user scenarios – but my whole point is to be able to cut through all that – and just show the total set of data available at any given point in time. Then you can A/B test and see what is available with in a fresh session with one tab open vs. the same webpage but with 12 tabs open, and a full day of history to boot.

(Latest Firefox & Chrome – on Win7, Win8 or Mint13 – although I'd like to think that won't make too much of a difference. Make assumptions. Simple is better.)

3 Answers 3

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All information available to webserver from browser collated into a finger-print:

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Includes surprising identifiers such as which system fonts are installed.

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  • Exactly what I was looking for, however the browser (apparently) retains much less information than I though. BUT, I have a unique fingerprint in over 4.2M visitors (Chrome-clean) and only 1 match in 262K users (Firefox-Ghostery-NoScript). Interestingly, the browser I have locked down completely has a dupe fingerprint and the completely virgin OEM browser is entirely unique - go figure. Of course there were some Windows updates last night, and I may just be the first person this morning with that one change or whatever – anyway – thanks!
    – ipso
    Jun 11, 2014 at 17:57
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Any website or a web service can collect astonishing amounts of information about you, your habits and, of course, your merchandizable preferences. This by only monitoring your steps though the web, let alone the collective and individual statistical information that can be generated with that information.

We are all the product being sold if we're not the ones buying something (but sometimes we're both).

The kinds of information range from search queries to geolocalization. It depends on the methods employed: tracking cookies, browser extensions, licence agreements…

But as far as you may be concerned, a web service can know (and they are more likely interested in):

  • Your habits.
  • The content you share within their services.
  • The content you publish within other sites that may sell your information.
  • The actual things and the kind of things you do with their services.
  • The actual things and the kind of things you do with other services that may sell your information.

Almost all of them are open to exchange your presence and your fingerprints on their applications for a good cash. The information includes, but is not limited to:

  • Addresses
  • Names
  • Numbers
  • Queries
  • Shopping lists
  • Geo position coordinates
  • Comments
  • Images
  • Your mood

One may say that all of this is evil, but there's a reason why they're called information technologies.

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  • Not exactly the list of app variables I was looking for but certainly interesting. I suspect search engine plugins send user data back to the mothership as well - as I think that code is not open source.
    – ipso
    Jun 11, 2014 at 18:09
  • I thought that this would be a more informative answer (at the cost of accuracy), since almost all the information isn't gathered through backdoors or background processes nowadays, literaly many people give all their information willingly.
    – arielnmz
    Jun 11, 2014 at 18:57
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Although not telling you ALL information as you request, there are various tools available at GRC which give a lot of information.

Better known for Shields Up, GRC will tell you what it can see from your browser. It should give some assistance in what you seek.

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  • Great link! I'm working through some of the security tools.
    – ipso
    Jun 11, 2014 at 18:04

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