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Privacy and the :visited selector

developer.mozilla.org · 488 words · saved by 1 readers

Before about 2010, the CSS :visited selector allowed websites to uncover a user's browsing history and figure out what sites the user had visited. This was done through window.getComputedStyle and other techniques. This process was quick to execute, and made it possible not only to determine where the user had been on the web, but could also be used to guess a lot of information about the user's identity. To mitigate this problem, browsers have limited the amount of information that can be obtained from visited links. To preserve users' privacy, Firefox and other browsers will lie to web applications under certain circumstances: You can style visited links, but there are limits to which styles you can use. Only the following styles can be applied to visited links: In addition, even for the above styles, you won't be able to change the transparency between unvisited and visited links, as you otherwise would be able to using the alpha parameter to rgb() or hsl(), or the transparent keywo

Privacy and the :visited selector - CSS | MDN Skip to main content Skip to search Privacy and the :visited selector Originally, the CSS :visited selector was a privacy and security risk. With a little bit of JavaScript, websites could uncover a user's browsing history and figure out what sites the user had visited. This was done using methods like window.getComputedStyle and other techniques. This process was quick, enabling websites to not only determine where the user had been on the web, but also to guess a lot of information about the user's identity. To mitigate this privacy concern, brow

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