Does the upload file INPUT HTML element give any personal information away?

Posted by Senseful on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Senseful
Published on 2010-05-06T23:10:55Z Indexed on 2010/05/06 23:18 UTC
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privacy

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html

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upload

I'm wondering what personal information the file input (<input type="file">) element gives the website.

I noticed that it does show the file name and the website does seem to have access to it. What about the file's path? If the file is located in My Documents, they could find out the user name via the path (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\Bob\My Documents) which many times is the actual user's name that is using the website.

What information do most modern browsers allow the website to access when a user uses the file input element?

Could JavaScript somehow be used to gain more information?

What about when plugins (such as Flash or Java) implement file uploading?

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