Netscape Pays $100,000 To Settle Privacy Issue

crazyhorse44 writes ""The New York Attorney General's office said on Friday Netscape would pay $100,000 as part of a settlement of complaints about a feature used by the unit of America Online to track what users downloaded online. Netscape, once the browser pioneer that has fallen second to Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer in recent years, would also delete all URLs and related data it has obtained through its SmartDownload browser software and undergo privacy audits, the Attorney General's office said. The settlement comes after a two-year probe, begun in 2002, into Netscape's collection and retention of information that identified files downloaded by users, which contradicted its statement to consumers that none of the information was saved." Story at Wired."

Comments

Not as bad as it's made out to be....

[TrancePhreak]

"The version of software that was reviewed has not been distributed since the fall of 2000 to consumers, and did not adversely impact users," an AOL spokesman said in a statement about the Netscape settlement.

I wonder if anyone else RTFA... My guess is not many people who care about it are still using this version of the browser anyway.

Re:Netscape == sad story

[mark_lybarger]

um, sorry, you've got things a little mis-interpreted i believe.

first, ns was about the only browser for linux for quite some time. even after AOL bought ns. MS never gave away IE for linux, they only released an outdated solaris version. also, MS giving away IE didn't directly kill off netscape. it was the OS bundling that killed off netscape. users didn't have to download a 10+ MB browser to install, it was already there on the pc. ISPs began to get really competitive. IIRC, it was win95 V. 2 that included IE 4.0 and that killed off netscape. prior to that netscape was still a very active browser. it was also around that time that aol bought netscape.

after aol bought netscape, they released the source code and started the mozilla project. could mozilla (or the current netscape) have gotten to where they are today much faster? sure, but they decided a rewrite was in order. so the customers or users had to wait a little while IE was nearly the only windows browser available, and NS 4.7 was the only linux broswer available (opera , konqueror, some gnome browser and others sprung up during that time). around moz 9.0 or so, people started to really use mozilla full time. it was a free quality standards compliant browser. none of the others that sprung up during that time compare to it. ie doesn't compare to it. it's still lacking some features (really easy plugin install) but those will come.

The Netscape Bug Bounty.

[x0n]

Ouch! Georgi Guninski must be feeling a little hard done by; he resolved a number of privacy problems for Netscape, but probably only got $1000 a pop.

Re:Privacy?

[krumms]

Also, consider that Netscape is a third party in this instance. There's a difference between passive logging by a HTTP server and blatant spying by a third party such as Netscape.