Systems and methods are provided that allow an application residing on a user device to intercept messages directed to that device and to extract control information and/or data from the intercepted messages for use by the application. In one embodiment, the intercepted message can cause the application to change its configuration or to present information to the user that came from a sending website. In another embodiment, a message from a device can trigger a website to send back a desired piece of data. The returned data may contain a flag, which directs the data to a formatting server. The formatting server then converts the data into a format that allows the data to be intercepted by the desired application on the user device. This then allows the desired data to be presented to the user in the context of an application resident on the user's device.