By When opening webpages to get the information you need, different files are downloaded on your computer. If you want to keep track of your web activity, then here’s a guide that will help you see what files a website has downloaded on your PC.
The tool you need in order to get this kind of information is WebSiteSniffer. With this tool, all the websites you visit will be monitored and track of the files these websites download will be kept. So, here’s what you have to do in order enjoy WebSiteSniffer and thus keep track of the files that are downloaded on your computer.
1. The first thing to do is to run WebSiteSniffer. This one doesn’t need to be installed since it’s a portable file.
2. When the program runs, you will have to press the green power button and thus begin to monitor the data packets from your network card.
3. Usually the tool monitors raw socket but this might depend on the system you use. In this case, you will have to use a capture driver. You can opt for one of these: WinPcap Capture Driver, Network Monitor Driver version 2.x or 3.x.
4. After you install the capture driver, make sure you restart your computer.
5. Now run WebSiteSniffer again and in order to open the Capture Option dialog box, press the F9 key.
6. You will see in this dialog box that you’ll have to select the file types you want the tool to capture as well as the folder where these sniffed files will be saved. Before hitting OK, don’t forget to select the network driver.
7. Now press the green power button in order to start.
8. The sniffed files will be saved in separate folders that will have the name of the website WebSiteSniffer has sniffed from. To view these sniffed files, all you have to do is to right-click on the packet you’re interested in and thus open it.
Using WebSiteSniffer will help you a lot especially if you share your Internet connection on a network. Thus, your network activity will be monitored. Plus, small files are downloaded on your system when you want to install programs like Skype and Google Chrome. In this case, WebSiteSniffer will sniff those files and you can save them on your disk. The only downside is that secured (https) websites cannot be captured with this tool.