With the increase in ransomeware incidents, people are becoming more interested in and focused on security.
As a result, we present a method for showing what information is being tracked by web browsers and sites such as facebook that you visit.
Web browsers store and send information in chunks called cookies. These cookies store unique information about your activity on a website, but it's not always personal info. In order to see what information is being stored on behalf of a website, the following procedure can be followed.
1. go to the website you wish to check cookies on.
2. press F12 or right click and choose inspect ( both of these work in chrome)
3. click console
4. paste the following code into the console...
var theCookies = document.cookie.split(';');
for (var i = 0 ; i < theCookies.length; i++) console.log ( (i+1) + ' ' + theCookies[i] );
The following type of output is generated:
1 TL=- VM20584:2
2 BLOGGER_EPRIVACY=y VM20584:2
3 preferredOpenIDProvider=openid VM20584:2
4 SID=ZATpDip9ARftiKoy1vCjWW862rdJq8YDw. VM20584:2
5 APISID=eP3x16b2KODr4CpU/A34TCD8FSssoJAgMw VM20584:2
6 SAPISID=viWf88-vk25xl_-R/AhhR7P_EFJbNdX09d VM20584:2
7 _ga=GA1.2.776065685.1476177244 VM20584:2
8 _gid=GA1.2.585868064.1496912034 VM20584:2
from the above I can see that there are 8 cookies at this site
heres how to tell what is going on here, e.g.
7 _ga=GA1.2.776065685.1476177244 VM20584:2
cookie number 7 for this site is named _ga with the value GA1.2.776065685.1476177244
the code that printed this was on the second line of code and the temporary number given to this session by google chrome is VM20584
_ga represents google analytics, so in this case the site is using google analytics code to track my movement.
As you can see from the report there is no personal information stored here. My identity is safe from other users of this PC!
