Electronic Privacy

When you enter website address (www.someweb.com for example) in the browser “Address” field and click “Go”, your browser performs the following steps concerning electronic privacy:

Electronic privacy 1 : Browser will try to resolve the domain name into IP address. To do so, it will send the following request to Domain Name Server (DNS): “give me IP address for the host www.someweb.com ”. DNS will reply something like this: “IP address for the host www.someweb.com is 192.168.3.1”

Electronic privacy 2 : Browser will try to establish TCP connection to the www.someweb.com web server IP address 192.168.3.1.

Electronic privacy 3 : Server will accept connection, and store your IP address, i.e. the address from which the request was sent, in logs.

Electronic privacy 4 : After the connection has been established, browser will send the following query to the server: “GET /”. With this request browser will send some additional electronic privacy details, like his capabilities (browser software type and version, accepted file types, electronic privacy, your preferred language, your operating system) and some additional info: referrer website address (in case you have followed this link from some website) and cookies (if any). It has to be noted that all this electronic privacy information will be stored in server logs as well.

Electronic privacy 5 : Server will reply with some header data (which can contain cookies) and page text in HTML format and close the TCP connection.

Electronic privacy 6 : Browser will format the HTML and show it to you in the window.

Let us sum this up. Making a click in your browser window you have advised the server owner the following electronic privacy details: your IP address, browser software type and version, file types your browser will accept, your preferred language, your operating system, what site or web page you have visited before. Additionally on electronic privacy, you have passed cookies intended for this site and accepted cookies from this site.