Is pinging a site similar to visiting a site through a browser?

Question

I was looking at the domain information of a website (poaulpos.net) on who.is that Chrome connects to whenever I visit a specific an old Tech Times article about Thunderstrike 2, a Mac firmware attack ("Thunderstrike 2 Is The Latest Nightmare Of Mac Owners''). I have Little Snitch, an application based firewall, so I blocked it the first time Chrome attempted to connect to it.

My question is very basic: clicking on the diagnostics tab of any who.is entry automatically runs a ping and a traceroute on the website. Is that more or less like visiting the website by typing the hostname into your browser and letting it load?

Andrea Bailey · Accepted Answer

No, pinging a site is very different from visiting a site A ping request is an ICMP packet which just by default sends null data to check if the host is up (You can change around the parameters being sent (read more here).) When you visit a website in the browser you are using the HTTP protocol which requests data and so you have a CLIENT/SERVER setup here (data is served to the client from the server upon a request that is sent in the HTTP protocol). Either way, if you are not the one sending the request but rather the service (poaulpos.net) you are using sends it, there is no traceback to you and therefore no security risk for you.

Is pinging a site similar to visiting a site through a browser?

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