When you visit a website on Internet, it may collect some information about your computer and IP address. What exact information is collected by a website from its visitors may generally be disclosed by that website in its privacy policy. However, the information collected by most of the websites is on similar lines. Let me explain the details of the information that may generally be collected by a website that you visit.
At the outset itself, let me state at that a website cannot find out your name, exact street address, phone number, email address, credit card information, etc., merely by the fact of your visiting that website. However, as will be explained later in this article, if you’ve decided to submit such information yourself in some earlier visit, the website may “remember” such information. But, if you’ve never shared this information yourself, a website would not know these personal details of yours.
Now, let me explain what sort of information can generally be collected by a website. It is mainly as under (however, not all the sites may be collecting all this information):
(1) Your IP address: Your IP address is generally collected by most websites in their web logs. The IP address is of the type “209.62.20.188”. Please understand that your IP address can generally be used to find out the location, that is generally the city, from where your computer / laptop is connected to that site. However, it is also possible to browse the web anonymously or pseudonymously, such as using some proxy server, in which case your real IP address could be withheld from the websites you visit. But, the proxy server, through which you visit the websites, may still know your IP address. Please also be aware that it is not possible for a website (on its own) to know more than your approximate location with the help of your IP address; therefore, it cannot know your name, exact street address, phone number, email address, or other personal information such as your credit card number, etc. However, the IP address can be used to locate your full details including your name and exact address, etc., in case your ISP (Internet Service Provider) gives this further information to the website owner. But, that will happen generally only when it involves a police case or some similar serious matter, and moreover, this will generally happen only with the intervention of the police and/or courts. Excepting these abnormal circumstances, a website cannot know more than your location such as the city name from your IP address.
(2) Date and time of your visit: The details such as date, time, duration of your visit, are generally collected by the websites.
(3) Which pages are visited by you: A website can also find out which pages have been visited by you on that site along with time duration, date, time of visiting each page. It may also be able to get the exact visitor path, i.e., from which page you went to which other page on the site, etc.
(4) Referring website address: Information as to which website referred you to the current website, can also be collected, in the form of the full URL of the referring web page.
(5) Exit link: Some websites may also know how did you exit the site, i.e., by clicking on which outgoing URL.
(6) Your download activity: If you’ve downloaded some files from the website, that information could also be available to the website.
(7) Browser: Name and version of the browser used by you.
(8) Operating system details: Do you use Windows? Which version? Such details of the operating system and its version on your computer may be collected.
(9) Screen resolution and screen colors: Information about resolution of your computer screen is generally collected. For example, whether you use 1024×768 size or more advanced resolution such as 1600×1200, or you’re still with the 800×600 resolution, may become known to the websites visited by you. Likewise, whether you use 32-bit color screen or 24-bit, may also be known to the websites.
(10) JavaScript: Have you enabled JavaScript on your browser? This information is also generally collected by websites.
(11) Flash version: Do you use Flash on your computer; and if yes, which version? It may be known.
(12) Language: The information about the language being used on your computer may also be collected.
(13) Connection speed: Information relating to your connection speed, i.e., device used to connect to the Internet may also be known; for example, whether you’re using Cable, DSL, T1, or Dialup connection to connect to the web.
(14) Are you a returning visitor? If yes, how many visits? If you’re a returning visitor to a website, it may know how many visits you’ve paid to the website. This information may be collected either by comparing your IP address (which is not a perfect method since your IP address may keep changing every time you visit the site) or by putting cookies on your computer (which can tell it correctly during the life-time of a cookie). Generally, it is done by putting some cookies on your computer. But, you can disable or delete cookies on your computer for each browser separately.
(15) Information collected through cookies (this is important): In addition to the information collected as above, many websites use cookies to collect information about you and your Internet use. A cookie is a small text file that can be put on your computer through the browser when you visit a website. Let me clarify that whether or not you want to allow the cookies on your computer is fully in your own control. If you don’t want your information to be shared with others through cookies, you can disable cookies in your browser; and, moreover, you can easily delete the existing cookies in your browser. For more details about cookies and how to disable them or delete them, see my earlier articles: All about Cookies – Part 1; Part 2 (Internet Explorer); Part 3 (Mozilla Firefox); and, Part 4 (Google Chrome).
Cookies may be used to get information about your repeat visits to a site. If you’ve purchased some goods or services from a website in your previous visit, and have paid online, your name, shipping address, email address, etc., may be known to that website. Such a website may put a cookie on your computer wherein your customer number or some other number to identify you may be included. Next time when you visit the same site, the stored cookie may inform the website about your customer number, etc., from which the website may find out your other stored details from its own database including your name, shipping address, etc.
Likewise, if a website uses advertisements through third-party ads service provider such as Google AdSense, such ads service provider may put a cookie on your computer to find out which websites you’re visiting so as to optimize the kind of advertisements shown to you. But, such information through a cookie can be collected or known only by or to the website that put that cookie; other websites cannot access the same cookie. Due to this reason, a website can know about your personal details through cookies only if you’ve yourself provided your personal information such as name or shipping address, etc., during a previous visit to that site. Moreover, if you delete the cookies or if you disable the cookies in your browser, no website can find out this information. So, it is all in your own control to decide how much information you want to share.
(16) Information submitted by you by signing up an account with a website: If you’ve signed up for an account with a website (free or otherwise, for buying something, using services, etc.), you’d have submitted your personal details such as name, user name, password, email address, phone number, etc. All these details are naturally known to that website the moment you login again to that website. For example, if you’ve signed up for Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, or at Twitter or Facebook or at Amazon, these sites would naturally be knowing the personal details submitted by you at the time of sign up or later. But, here again, the control lies with you. It is up to you to open an account with a website and also as to how much and which information to submit to that site.
(17) Want to know more what information is collected by a website? Read privacy policy of that website, which is generally linked to all pages on a site. The privacy policy of a website would generally give you full details of the information collected from you and also how such information is used / stored / shared, etc. But, generally speaking, the information collected would be as stated in this article.
Conclusion:
It can thus be seen that most of the information collected by the websites relates to the information intended to analyze the visitor behavior and to find out things about your computer (and not you). This is generally helpful to you also since the websites may be in a position to offer you better contents if they know about your browser, JavaScript, Screen resolution, language, etc. Your name, street address, phone number, email address, credit card number, etc., cannot be found by a website unless you’ve yourself decided to share such information (or unless your ISP tells it through your IP address, but generally not without the intervention of police and/or courts). And, if you’ve provided such personal details to a responsible website, it would not disclose such information to any other websites or third parties without your knowledge or consent.
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