The Glasshouse

You think you're looking at a website.

The website is looking at you.

Give me one minute. I'll tell you what your browser just handed me without being asked, what changes when you say yes to things, and what a stranger could infer about you from almost nothing. It's all real. None of it gets kept, unless you ask me to. That's more than the last site you visited can say.

No tricks. No storage. You can stop at any point.

The Glasshouse

This page is a live demonstration of what a website can learn about you, and it needs JavaScript to run, because JavaScript is exactly the thing doing the learning. With it switched off, most of the tricks below simply do not work, which is itself the point: turning it off is one of the few real defences you have.

With JavaScript on, this page would read your device, your screen, your browser, your rough location, and a fingerprint of your machine, then narrate how. It keeps none of it unless you ask.

You think you're looking at a website.

The fortnightly read.