I’ve come across half a dozen site in the past month that seem to be concerned with a little JavaScript that will provide information about the user’s surfing. The idea is that some site can access this history and make certain assumptions about the user of the browser. As if this will be any good information. Though one site did mention the scenario where one site may check the browser history to see if the use came from some competitor. In this case the site would or would not provide information to the user. This is all speculation on the scenario.

The sites that present this as something new and frightening need to get a clue. This is not new! The JavaScript to access the browser has been available for some time. But I’m guessing the use of this JavaScript functionality will be something like the new AJAX functions that have been available for years but not ‘discovered’ until recently.