[Brad]

In the off chance that this is a serious request, I'm also willing to give the benefit of the doubt…

*stretches, cracks knuckles*

Hi! 👋 Allow me to explain a few of the things about how the internet and web browsers work that aren't usually visible to non-developers. Aside from running sites like AppleNova for the last 20+ years, I've also been a professional software engineer working in the web server space for almost as long. It's easy for tech-savvy people to take for granted having the knowledge of the inner workings of internet software. So, I'll try to break this down piece by piece.

Originally Posted by unvarying Yesterday, don't know why I scrolled down and saw few websites click on those and to my surprise they were telling my ISP, IP, Location, Web browser, and even OS? :O shouldn't all this be private? How do they know so much information about me? Do you guys have any idea?

Every website you visit knows most if not all of the things you described. When your web browser retrieves any content, be it text, images, video, or anything else, it includes in that request some information that describes your browser itself. This is known as the "user agent string" and it typically includes:

• the name of your web browser
• the version of your web browser
• the name of your operating system
• the version of your operating system

From that list, someone could also determine if you're using a desktop computer or mobile device like an iPhone and even what revision of that device it is.

What does the web server do with this information? Typically, not much at all. This user agent string can be used to choose different content to send to your web browser. If, for example, the string indicates you're using a mobile device like an iPhone, the server might respond with a different version of the web page to better fit your phone's screen size.

Web servers could then throw away your user agent string once it's done processing the request, or they could just as easily save your information or even share or sell it to third parties. This is nothing new and has been happening for decades.

But what about your IP address, ISP, and location? And what if you've never visited a site that somehow knows about your IP address?

That goes a little bit deeper into the technology stack. Every request any app uses to communicate across the internet (web browsers, email, chat, streaming, games… the list goes on!) effectively includes your local IP address. Without your IP address, the response content couldn't find its way back to you. Servers can also choose to discard your address after the request or they could save it, share it, and sell it with plenty of other aggregated information about who is using particular services online.

IP addresses are owned in large sets by the various ISPs, and these sets are generally known to be used in particular geographic areas. Looking at an IP address alone can generally indicate the country and region of a country it's being used, and at best the city. When your device connects to the internet, your ISP temporarily assigns an IP address to your device, and the ISP could change your address or even assign it to someone else when you disconnect. So, it's very likely that if you're just looking up your current IP address, someone else unrelated to you who happens to use your same ISP has at some point in the past also used that IP address.

There are also numerous websites built specifically to tell you about all this information they can see when your browser makes a request. Many of these exist as a marketing trick to sell you additional privacy tools, but if you ignore the sales pitches, you can just see all the fun details. For example, https://www.whatsmyua.info/ and https://whatismyipaddress.com/ (among many others).

For what it's worth, I don't do anything on AppleNova with IP addresses or any other aggregate visiting user information. Technically this web server does log the address with each request (this is standard behavior for nearly all web servers), but logs on this server are frequently rotated and deleted. Keeping them around would waste far too much disk space that, frankly, I can't afford. The forum software we use also logs IP addresses, but it only retains one's IP address when submitting a new thread or a reply to a thread.

If you're still here and reading, I hope you found this useful. Feel free to chime in with any further questions, and I'd be happy to try to answer them.