Cumulus Support

A site by those nice people at Google. It's an online book which aims to help people understand the Internet and explain some of the technologies.

http://www.20thingsilearned.com/home

NO.1 don't trust Google
This web site(http://www.20thingsilearned.com)is asking to store data on your computer for offline use.
UM i don't think so

said that with my browser, i just clicked "not now" and carried on with the site

You would be amazed at what websites store on your computer every time you visit.

Or track your visit, ip address, etc

VERY basic example below

robynfali wrote:VERY basic example below

I am not going to ask you how and where you got that particular IP address...

But, but ... it is missing a lot of information, such as the region, the city, the latitude, the longitude... ...the time zone is wrong (70.67.38.69 is on PST or -08:00) and the net speed is cable...

I guess the region could/would be British Columbia (that is on the west coast of Canada) and the city could/would be Port Alberni (Vancouver Island, British Columbia) - well, that seems to be the location where the Shaw Communications offices/servers are located, some 130 kilometers north west from my home/office location in Maple Bay (near Duncan, also on Vancouver Island, British Columbia).

This has been my IP address for a couple of months, since Shaw Communications moved (centralized) its Internet servers to Port Alberni.

And, guess what, as David stated, (almost) every Website operators gather data from its users ... as you do on your weather Web pages by using 'ClustrMap'...

Only applies to you Gemini. Other ppl see their IP.

Very Good Rob. A bit early for an April Fool I think

It doesnt show your HOME location, it shows the location that your connected to, as you correctly say, your ISP, when I look at it, it shows manchester, england, but I don't live there, as my own location shows.

You only get to see your own details, not others, but as said, it was a VERY basic example. And yeah the clustrmap shows visitors, but again, only from the network hub they are connected to

Yes, people have panicked about this before. The information is obtained by a script running on YOUR computer. It gives information about your system to YOU - there is no communication back to the web. OTOH there are ways of obtaining your IP address but this is not that important - your firewall will stop incoming data that you/your computer hasn't actually asked for.

Gina wrote:Yes, people have panicked about this before. The information is obtained by a script running on YOUR computer. It gives information about your system to YOU - there is no communication back to the web. OTOH there are ways of obtaining your IP address but this is not that important - your firewall will stop incoming data that you/your computer hasn't actually asked for.

I’m not sure about that, your system information is freely available to anyone;
I have a free web counter from gostats on another site and and it tells me all sorts of info, here is a snapshot of three visits, by the way disableing cookies has no effect.

Indeed -- I do not think people realize what info is gathered when they visit a site.

Usually it is not possible to identify you directly (unless cookies are used), or your have a fixed IP address

There's a nice little tool for Chrome that can block all the trackers used by websites to gather info about your surfing habits on their site


Getting back to topic and the original 'panic' -- the website mentioned at the start of the post appears to want to download the electronic book so you can read it off line if needed; nothing too sinister in that. However it is good to be vigilant.

Wish people would be more vigilant on facebook, jesus, how many on there download links and apps off stupid pages, then complain when they have problems

robynfali wrote:Wish people would be more vigilant on facebook, jesus, how many on there download links and apps off stupid pages, then complain when they have problems

Don't even start me on FB -- I enjoy FB for keeping up to date with friends but, as you say, some people click on a lot of crap without ever considering what they are doing. Example, why does the 3rd party app need access to all my friends, my birthday, ability to post to my wall and email my friends. FB have done the right thing by telling you what an app will do but users seem incapable of reading it and just click 'ok'