Are CNC Subpages Visible to the World? And a Q about Directory Visibility

[Don Wallace]

For example, .../CNC steers me to a subpage with a URL www.mysite.com/stats. I observe that I can go into AOL and access this page directly. For that matter, I can get there from any browser, it seems.

I am not real interested in the 'world' being able to see all of my site structure by browsing through the lists of URL statistics. For that matter I am not interested in just anyone seeing my site statistics. Any way to turn this visibility of stats off outside CNC?

A related question... Exactly how 'visible' are files that are not linked by any publicly known index.htm page? For example, suppose in my site I had a page of interest to my immediate family only, located at www.mysite.com/family/index.htm. Can someone with only knowledge of the www.mysite.com URL find the 'family' subdirectory assuming that I have a valid index.htm located at the top of the www directory tree to load for accesses to www.mysite.com?

Anyone utterly confused by my questions? Me too. :-) "Beat" on me and I will try to formulate clearer examples...

Thanks!

- Don

[hearts]

I know that the search engines cannot access your stats, and if you wanted to, you could password protect your stats dir.

I kinda got confused to the rest of the questions, but I think the above answer could be applied here to about the dir for your family.

As for knowing your dir structure, if you have an index.htm or index.html in each dir, then no one will be able to view your www setup

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hearts
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[This message has been edited by hearts (edited 03-31-99).]

[Deb]

I think what you are wanting is the ability to password protect these areas.

You will find the information you need to do so here http://www.futurequest.net/Tutorials/pwprotect.shtml

By going with password protection, it makes it so if someone does find these pages they would have to know the username and password combination to enter.

Deb

[Del]

Exactly how 'visible' are files that are not linked by any publicly known index.htm page?

Very visible. For example, I go visit www.yoursite.com/family/index.html (because you told be to go look at the pic of your nephew)(or something). When I'm done looking at that page, I type futurequest.net into my Location bar and hit Enter. Bingo, yoursite.com/family/index.html is shown as the referrer in Deb's access logs. Deb sees that referrer, and goes to check it out to see who might possibly be linking to FQuest. She sees your index, then punches one of her bookmarks (eg www.google.com). Google's access logs see your family page as the referrer, and throw that URL (along with all their other referrer's) into the list for that night's indexing jaunt. Boom, you're hidden family page is now indexed in Google.

The only true way to make sure it's hidden is by password protecting it with .htaccess. Search engines, me, Deb, and anyone else without the password cannot see it at all.

Del

[Justin]

It is a common misconception that the stats directory is protected because it is usually accessed through the CNC - but I found out only after bookmarking my actual stats directory and not being asked for a password. I have since protected it.

I do the exact same thing - I have found a lot of warez sites that way - they link to me and I find them in the stats. Or someone may just happen to click a bookmark or type the URL to my site while at that page. But here's another scenario:

You are looking at YOUR stats and follow some links, see who's linking. Now that person has your stats page as a referer URL in THEIR stats So they follow the link and see your stats and follow links from there out of curiosity - then you follow to their stats - it goes on forever.

And the worst part is that a search engine bot can follow links and eventually end up at your stats. Then they see ALL your URL's and index them. Hidden or not (as long as they are not protected with .htaccess that is). All in all, if you don't want the world to see something it needs to be password protected.

Always remember, it is the World wide web


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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

[Don Wallace]

To everyone who replied - a big "FutureQuest thanks!!" Especially Del's lucid explanation of how HTTP referrers can track unlisted web sites.

I just set up a wwwboard that is getting a *lot* of hits. (OK, not because of me but because I am riding on someone else's shoulders so to speak.) With this extra visibility I want to know what to be careful about.

Guess I better password protect my directories. I am glad I was not imagining things with the 'stats' visibility.

- Don