Creepy new website makes its monitoring of your online behaviour visible

just tried that. its really creepy

 

That Dutch accent is even scarier. *shudder*

The website demonstrates the power of JavaScript. A lot can be done with that language, for good and bad purposes. The web has become so dependent on it, that turning it off is not an option anymore.

 

I dont know anything about the web so I want to ask a stupid question: are those web owners able to monitor everything on the computer if we accessed their webpages or just what we do on that exact page/site?

 

It is the latter. However, websites can request some special access, e.g. to your camera or location. This is something you can turn off in most browser settings, including Safari. If you are using any internet plugins, such as Java or Flash, then you do have to be careful, because these can act as trojan horses (I mean that metaphorically, not in the malware sense) and give websites deeper access to your computer. You should remove them, turn them off or restrict their access to specific websites only.

 

I was expecting a summary of website data and my device and browser capabilities returned that makes up my face to the internet and then see a list of what sites use to monitor me and my online activities, like different sites cookies, ad networks data, facebook usage and so on.

This only followed my pointer and if I was in the window or not..

 

Perhaps not on its own, but if everything is put together? How you move your cursor can identify you if other data is available about you. It is called fingerprinting. Check out this website for a test: https://panopticlick.eff.org.