Web bug reveals browsing history

[DorsetBoy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11899092

Porn sites are among the top users of a browser bug that reveals all the places people go online, finds research.

Carried out by computer science researchers at UC San Diego the study found 485 sites exploiting the bug.

The flaw gives sites access to all the other sites that user has visited. Many use it to target ads or see if users are patronising rivals.

The researchers said their work showed a need for better defences against history tracking.

The bug exploits the way that many browsers handle links people have visited. Many change the colour of the text to reflect that earlier visit.

This can be abused with a specially written chunk of code sitting on a website that interrogates a visitors browser to see what it does to a given list of websites. Any displayed in a different colour are judged to be those a user has already seen.

A survey of 50,000 of the web's most visited websites by the team from UC San Diego found 485 sites using this method to get at browser histories, 63 were copying the data it reveals and 46 were found to be "hijacking" a user's history............ (more)

[Gary]

I have mine turned off anyway in FF its fixed in version 4 though, Safari 5.0.3 has it fixed on the Mac already, but its still easy to get round from what I have read. Anyway I don't browse porn sites, who does? You just stare at one pic    

[Rik]

I must stop Googling MILF.

[Gary]

I must stop Googling MILF.

[armadillo]

I reckon the BBC article is another one jumping on the bandwagon of scaring the paranoid and also giving a false sense of security to anyone who then believes that "private browsing" will keep their browsing private.

http://lifehacker.com/5395267/how-to-really-browse-without-leaving-a-trace

[Rik]

The BBC has a record for woeful technology reporting.