What data a website can collect from you?

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Want To Know what data a websites collect from you, here is the complete info you want to know how and what data any website can collect it from you.

Each time When you want to access a website, you have to enter the website's domain name or URL then your web browser sends a lookup request to the DNS look up server to get the domain name's IP-Address then When your web browser gets the IP Address of that website then your web browser sends http request to that server using your own IP-Address , Next the server will return the stored data to the browser, Finally your web browser will display the needed data of that particular web page.

From the above paragraph you have already got what data has been taken from you and that is your IP-Address .

Your IP Address: 84.17.47.124

When your browser displays the content.

When you arrive at the contents of that web page the website itself starts to collect data from you.

The are two types of Websites

one-off landing pages, portfolio websites, read-only websites and other resume websites.

• Static Websites:
  one-off landing pages, portfolio websites, read-only websites and other resume websites.
• Dynamic Websites
  Ecommerce Websites, Search engine websites, messaging websites, blogs and other frequently updating and changing data websites.

Static websites: are sites that displays informational texts or images only, they don't need any data to store and most of the time they just display the information that they have.

Dynamic websites: are sites that displays complex data such as online shopping categories or search results, they need data to store and process so they can give you the best personalized contents.

What data dynamic sites can collect?

Whenever you try to access a website, your browser sends a lot of data other than your IP-Address.

What data your browser can send?

Your web browser can send a lot of data from you device, like..

• User Agent:
  Contains your device name, type, brand, resolution width & height, viewport width & height. Your browser name, version & render engine Your device Operating System name and version.
• Cookie data
  Long string of text that stored on your device before (when you visit the site during your first time).
• Your device or browser language
  That indicates the server to send the provided language.
• Referrer URL
  From where page or URL you're come in.

Using the above data the server that hosts the website will determine you by just looking at your device type, your device language, your device width, browser name and your referrer URL, So the server will return the appropriate content to your browser. All these data are collected when your browser make a request for the website's Server.

What data your browser can receive?

Your web browser can receive a lot of data from the server depending your request, like..

• Parse User agent data:
  Converted to Your device name, type, brand, resolution width & height, viewport width & height. Your browser name, version & render engine Your device Operating System name and version.
• Cookie data
  Long string of text that will stored on your device if this is your first time to visit the site.
• personalized data
  according your Geolocation data that is converted from your IP-Address and your device data the server will return personalized data.

Using the above data the server that hosts the website will know you like your geolocation data and device data so it can serve you better and bring you a personalized contents. Determine you by just looking at your device type, your device language, your device width, browser name and your referrer URL, So the server will return the appropriate content to your browser. All these data are returned when the server make a response for your browsers request.

What data specifically websites can store?

Geographical Data.

Since your IP-Address has been detected, Your IP-address will converted in to your geographical data like the country & city that you're live in, your Longitude and Latitude, ISP (internet service provider), currency and currency exchange, and many more.

This detection can be made using other third party sites or the website's own database look up method. For example your real IP-Address 84.17.47.124 is converted in to your:

Country Name: Netherlands
Country Code: NL
City: Amsterdam
Region: North Holland
Region Code: NH
Region Name: North Holland
Continent Name: Europe
Continent Code: EU
In the EU: 1
EU VAT Rate: 21
Latitude: 52.3385
Longitude: 4.9168
Radius of Accuracy (Miles): 50
Timezone: Europe/Amsterdam
Currency: EUR
Currency Symbol: €
Exchange Rate: 0.9567

Some of the data may not available but most of it does. Of course you can spoof these data using VPN, and the data will be converted in to the VPN's server IP Address and can be changed when your IP-Address changes. Not this only, There are the names of your ISP too.

Device data

Now lets see what data can the website collect from your device?

First, there is long string data that sent in every request to the server called User-Agent

This is your User Agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/107.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

This User agent can't understand by a normal user/human but it should be parsed using some online User Agent parsers, like online user agent parser parser APIs, For example, This Userparser API have an accurate User agent parser API.

By parsing your User agent the website can get these data from you

browser name: Chrome
browser version: 107
browser full version: 107.0.0.0
Browser render engine: Blink
Operating system name: Windows
Operating system version: 10
Device name: null
Device type: Desktop
Device brand: null
Device screen width: null
Screen height: null
Device viewport screen width: null
Device viewport screen height: null
Is device touch screen: false
is device mobile: false
Device/browser language: null

Some of the data may not available but most of it does. Of course you can spoof these data using User agent switcher, and the data will be converted in to the User agent you've chosen.

Device Language

Yes the website owner already have got the language of your browser/device from your user-agent, But there is another possible method to get your actual browser acceptable languages.

This is your acceptable languages that your browser sends in every request you made to the website server.

These are your browser's acceptable languages: en,en-US;q=0.9,ti;q=0.8

These language preferences are sent with every request you have made to the server to inform the website server in what language is your browser can display.

Detecting user browser or device language using his/her user agent is very difficult since not all browsers send its preferred language with their user agent, But the accept_language header can bring your browser languages better.

Battery percentage Level

Do you know website owners can detect you device battery percentage level too?

Well, you will know now, here is your device battery percentage level: 100%, And Battery charging: true

Most of the time this feature has an accurate detail in Smartphone devices than in laptop and desktop. In desktop or laptop the result may vary and in desktop it displays 100% and in charging true mode always.

Online status

If you don't have internet the browser can't bring and display the website's content, right? Well, what if your internet is interrupted while you're navigating inside the website. Then what if the web developer try to send or receive some data to his/her server while your device internet is interrupted then here you go, the web developer can check your internet status that is wither your are Online or Offline

Now your are: Online

You can turn of your WIFI or mobile data then refresh the page, you'll see the the result.

RAM memory check

The web developer/owner can know your device RAM easily using browser devicememory API.

Here is your device RAM memory size: 8GB

This RAM size may useful for the web developer to show you wither any software memory requirement is good enough for you or not before you try to download it.

Connection type

The web developer can also detect your internet connection method like, its through WIFI, mobile data, ethernet etc...

Now you're using: 4G

Number of cores:

Your device has 4 number of cores.

All these data are available for any website to store in its database without your need of Login, or other authentication system. If you gave your username, email or other data to the website like fill in the forms that found in that website then of course the website owner will likely to store your privet details along with your listed in the above data.

A website owners can know a lot about your device, But most the time you can spoof the data easily by using VPN , User-Agent switcher , secure Web browser & other security measures.

Now that's it from me.

If you're satisfied with this article you will probably share or comment below. If not or have a question contact me directly.

Thank you 😊