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Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

varun.ch

21–30 of 63 posts

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#21
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But dont you need js to check for the styles to see if the link is visited?

No, each square the user clicks could be a checkbox that is submitted to the backend as a form when they click done.

It could even just use CSS selectors to reveal an image or change a background image that results in a request to the backend.

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#22
The answer to having both visited styles and not security violations is to allow a domain to only style links that are local to that domain and not others.

They already do that with referers, there is a security level to only let the site see referers that are local to its domain. I think this is the default for https

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#24
I believe this is not a new concept. However, I applaud the accessibility, style and implementation of the proof-of-concept, given that the author seems to be only 15!

Also sidenote: I like the creative and subtle plug for the author's 'Quickz' project (seems to be a Kahoot alternative - I have never heard of either) in the "not visited category".

Keep up the good work!

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is going on with those new accounts preaching against online privacy recently? Edit: For the lurkers trying to educate themselves, I recommend those resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenfour https://vimeo.com/nothingtohide

I don't think the new account was actually arguing against privacy (those words have basically become a strawman now); rather it was just a bit of dry humour.

I just reread the comment and maybe you are right. I don't know if he edited the comment or if I misread when I wrote my reply, but I didn't see the word "goes". So I read "I believe the argument [...]".

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#26
post #4

I rarely see websites that actually make use of `:visited` style as intended, it would be good if browsers had an option to just disable it and prevent this class of leaks completely.

> I rarely see websites that actually make use of `:visited` style as intended

Some well-known websites do it, such as Google and Wikipedia.

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#27
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not require js to work. In essense, it uses css styles to exploit visited links.

You need js to extract the PI though?

This one does not really need JS, the captcha could be done with an HTML form and checkboxes.

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#28
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not require js to work. In essense, it uses css styles to exploit visited links.

You need js to extract the PI though?

You can do requests to the site using pure CSS as well, using something like `.site:visited { background-image: url(/logging/site); }`

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#29
post #4

I rarely see websites that actually make use of `:visited` style as intended, it would be good if browsers had an option to just disable it and prevent this class of leaks completely.

I like :visited. It’s useful. I don’t want browsers to disable it, but developers to stop clobbering and disabling it on their sites.

Any site I make will have sane blue underlined links and purple underlined visited links. I’m willing to vary the shades of blue and purple, and I prefer to reduce the opacity of the underline when not interacting with the link, but I say general links should be blue and purple and underlined, and anything else is troublemaking.

(In https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/3012, there’s talk of changing :visited to essentially work from the site’s perspective—exposing only history that the site could have tracked itself—rather than for the user as global visitedness does. This makes me sad, though I quite understand the perspective; to me, :visited has always been about the user, even though such first-party link following is its primary use.)

Re: Retrieving your browsing history through a CAPTCHA

#30
post #2

Are there any extensions that protect from this?

I use Firefox Focus. It deletes your history each time you close the app. I find I never need my history, so I’m happy to have it deleted regularly. Others seem to use their history and tabs, so YMMV.
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