Violating Your Own Privacy

[dusty]

These days we have all become somewhat concerned about our privacy with regard to what is available on the world wide web. This morning, while posting to another thread, I did something that I cannot fully explain but feel that I must mention.

I had received an email special from Shopsmith and wanted to comment on its content. I created a link to an image in that email special and posted that here along with my comments.

When I went back and clicked on that link - wow - it put me right back in my own email and from there I was able to browse my own computer files.

CAUTION: When creating links that reference back to your own files, check them (the links) to make sure you want to make that particular link public.

I don't keep much on this computer that could not be viewed by everyone but I am sure that some of you have info in your files that are not for public consumption.

[mickyd]

These days we have all become somewhat concerned about our privacy with regard to what is available on the world wide web. This morning, while posting to another thread, I did something that I cannot fully explain but feel that I must mention.

I had received an email special from Shopsmith and wanted to comment on its content. I created a link to an image in that email special and posted that here along with my comments.

When I went back and clicked on that link - wow - it put me right back in my own email and from there I was able to browse my own computer files.

CAUTION: When creating links that reference back to your own files, check them (the links) to make sure you want to make that particular link public.

I don't keep much on this computer that could not be viewed by everyone but I am sure that some of you have info in your files that are not for public consumption.
I'll let the computer gurus validate but I am pretty sure that no other computer than the one you were on that created that path could access back to the computer. I have seen the same thing. For a public computer to access, it would have to first get past your firewall which requires special permissions.

I am interested in hearing the comments.

[heathicus]

You're right, Mike.

Dusty, I am 99.999% positive that no other computer could have accessed your computer and files via that link. For one thing, while your cable/dsl modem might have a publicly accessible IP address, computer that connect through that modem do NOT have public IP addresses.

Secondly, the link was probably to a local file and in the form of "file:///<path to file on your computer>". This works when YOU click on it because that is the path to the file on YOUR computer. If I were to click on that link, it would look for the same file in the same location on MY computer. It not being there, I would get an error.

For it to be as easy as me clicking on a link and seeing files on your computer, you'd have to configure web server software on your computer and tell it what files to show me. While it is possible for ME to see files on your computer the way you saw them, it takes some work and doesn't just happen by accident.

[dusty]

You're right, Mike.

Dusty, I am 99.999% positive that no other computer could have accessed your computer and files via that link. For one thing, while your cable/dsl modem might have a publicly accessible IP address, computer that connect through that modem do NOT have public IP addresses.

Secondly, the link was probably to a local file and in the form of "file:///<path to file on your computer>". This works when YOU click on it because that is the path to the file on YOUR computer. If I were to click on that link, it would look for the same file in the same location on MY computer. It not being there, I would get an error.

For it to be as easy as me clicking on a link and seeing files on your computer, you'd have to configure web server software on your computer and tell it what files to show me. While it is possible for ME to see files on your computer the way you saw them, it takes some work and doesn't just happen by accident.Well, that is good to know because it seems like a mistake that anyone could make and could have disastrous results depending on the computer involved.