When you go on the internet, you have to give certain bits of information to be authenticated by the protocols that make the web work; this makes it possible to advertise who you are, where you're connecting from, and if you're not careful, a lot more Among the information that's handed out freely is your IP (Internet Protocol) address, generally in the form of four sets of numbers separated by periods, the country your ISP is located in, often times the origination of your TCPIP stack, which tells someone if you're on a Mac, PC or Linux box, your browser type used, and, because of browser caching for speedy access to previously hit sites, your browser history