Can a website see the file location of a document I upload?

Question

While applying to a job, I uploaded a resume to a recruiting website:

C:\myname\an\embarrassing\path\to\my\resume.pdf

Can the website see the file path of my uploaded document?

not in any browser newer than about 8 years old... – dandavis Jan 08 '19 at 20:15 — dandavis, Jan 08 '19 at 20:15

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 08 '19 at 20:59

2

No! Almost all modern browsers change the path to something like C:\fakepath\filename.ext in order to protect your privacy.

edited Jan 08 '19 at 20:59

Xander

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answered Jan 08 '19 at 20:30

Aman Aryan

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@forest It's not included in the upload, but the (fake) path can be read by Javascript as the `.value` of the input element. – Jan 09 '19 at 03:44

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 09 '19 at 19:42

Browser security controls prevent client-side scripts from accessing the full path of local resources. JS running inside the context of a browser by default has no access to the file system. HTML5 provides an API as mentioned in this answer but apparently anonymizes/sanitize output at the browser level.

Can a website see the file location of a document I upload?

2 Answers2