Google Chrome Spinoff 'Iron' For Privacy Fanatics

Sonnet_XVIII writes "According to DownloadSquad, A German company SRWare has developed a Google Chrome Spin off called Iron aimed at people who are concerned or have questions about Google's policies for collecting usage data."

Comments

Since when

[szo]

we started to call forks a "spin off"?

Re:Since when

[Bryansix]

Somebody confused their Television terms with their Technical terms.

Re:Since when

[danieltdp]

So, I wanna know when chrome's next season will begin. I heard it will be on the Linux channel

Translation

[Stooshie]

I only speak a little German. So here is a bery bad translation via babelfish:

SRWare Iron: The browser of the future - based on the free source text " Chromium" - without doubts with the data protection and security Googles Web browser chrome inspires with an extremely fast structure of web page, a slim Design and imaginative functions. The data-security commissioners practice however also criticism, approximately because of the production of a clear user ID or the transmission from inputs google for the generation of search proposals. SRWare Iron is a genuine alternative. The browser basedly on the Chromium source text and offers so the same basic functions as chrome - however without the criticized points, which concern the data protection. We could provide from there a browser, with which you can use immediately the innovative features, without having to think about the keeping of your privacy. We would like to leave and place our users at our work sharings the browser free of charge to the download under the name " SRWare Iron" in the net. What makes Iron concretely differently than chrome? Read here.

Removing Unique User ID

[gurps_npc]

That alone makes it far superior to Chrome.

Re:Removing Unique User ID

[denominateur]

Judging by the comparative table on the SRWare page, it does indeed.

Better name

[bennybertow]

They should have called it "Tinfoil" instead...

Re:Better name

[fizzding]

I dunno... "He's hiding something, clamp him in irons!" sounds about right to me.

Re:Better name

[MrNaz]

If you consider clearing cookies and basic privacy to be tinfoil type material, then may I have your email address? My ideas will intrigue you and I think you would like to subscribe to my newsletter.

Re:Better name

[genghisjahn]

Wait til they get a load of my Transparent Aluminum Browser...it will alter the future!

Alert me when it runs on Mac and/or Linux.

[greenguy]

I promise not to make "dupe" comments.

Re:Alert me when it runs on Mac and/or Linux.

[Al Dimond]

Most browser vulnerabilities aren't as simple as vulnerabilities in common network server or client code. I think it would be pretty damn hard to declare a browser secure by examining its code.

Language

[craigavonite]

The SRWare site and the installer are in German, but the browser itself (menu's, etc.) is in English, just for anyone thinking you're going to have to hunt out an EnUs addon or something

What's Next?

[arizwebfoot]

Tin Hat?

Titanium?

--
Oh Well, Bad Karma and all . . .

Re:Fanatical

[MrNaz]

I'm increasingly starting to think that Slashdot editors are being underhandedly paid by Google to subtly ridicule anti-Google articles or sentiments. The wording of this summary makes it pretty blatantly obvious that the editor wants to make people who are suspicious of Google appear "fanatical", implying all the baggage that that word carries with it these days.

How is it fanatical to not want to send your data to a private corporation? Would it be fanatical if that corporation was Microsoft, Sony or Universal Studios?

I clear my cookies regularly. What Slashdot calls fanatical I call routine. So I guess that makes me a fanatic.

Re:Fanatical

[redJag]

Fanatical people don't think of themselves as fanatical. Only the people that label them fanatical do..

Re:Fanatical

[Bryansix]

Uhm, because there is a box you have to check to OPT-IN to the program to send them that information.

Re:Fanatical

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Bullshit. In the modern surveillance society, you'd have to be stupid to not take every precaution you reasonably can.

Re:Fanatical

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is determining what a reasonable person would call a fanatic. We all think we're reasonable, when honestly I find most of us (myself included) to be essentially unreasonable most of the time.

Calling someone fanatical these days is less about about extremism (for good or ill), and more about casting disrespect.

You don't trust Google...

[John Hasler]

But you are expected to trust some obscure German software company. Right.

The sad thing is, some of you will (but then, you already use Windows...)

Re:You don't trust Google...

[neuromanc3r]

But you are expected to trust some obscure German software company. Right.)

You don't have to. You the source code is available for download. (And you could obviously monitor your traffic see if the browser phones home)

Their promises are as good as their source

[thisfred]

So they take the open source code, and redistribute it as an executable only. Of course completely legal under the BSD license, but wouldn't a privacy nut wonder why they give away the application for free but not the source code?

Re:Their promises are as good as their source

[denominateur]

The source code is available.

Re:Their promises are as good as their source

[argStyopa]

Um, isn't the source code also downloadable from their site?
http://www.srware.net/software_srware_iron_download.php

Look at the bottom - the source is available in 4 parts, it seems.

Translated FAQ

[Rie Beam]

What is Iron?

Iron is an Internet Browser, like Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera. It is based off of the free online source code of "Chromium".

I read that there are tools which attempt to make Chrome anonymous. Why shouldn't I simply use these?

There are worthwhile Freeware tools which offer similar functionality. However, these do not work from source and offer only limited control. Functions like the URL tracker cannot be switched off. This only offers variable security.

Iron is free -- how do you finance it?

In order to keep Iron financed, we place an advertisement on the front page. We also ask for donations if you like the product -- it would make us happy.

How can one be sure that Iron doesn't inadvertantly send data?

This is a concern. We log all incoming and outgoing packets and did not detect any precarious activity. You can also test this yourself.

PS: The harmless (DNS Vorabruf?) has been disabled based on standard, since it can possibly be abused by Spammern.

Do you offer uncompiled source code for Chromium?

This would be useless, because Chromium Builds likewise contain the offending source code. We only offer the modified Iron.

Re:Fanatical? use Opera

[AliasMarlowe]

I configured Opera to clear all cookies at the end of every session. Occasionally, I also clear them during a session.

In Epiphany, I regularly clean out all cookies manually. I do this before and after visiting any e-commerce or financial site, even if I don't conduct any transactions.

It's no more fanatical than using a condom.

The differences

[nephridium]

According to the German webpage there are several significant improvements:

* unlike the current Chrome beta it uses the newest Webkit version of the current Chromium build

* it does not generate a unique ID of every client for use by Google

* no installation timestamp ill be generated for google

* no "suggest feature" that phones home to google (for help) what you type into the address bar

* will not phone home to google in case you mistyped a URL

* no phoning home for error reporting

* does not send RLZ tracking info to google, e.g. about when and where Chrome was downloaded

* NO frickin updater that installs itself as a startup app to run in the background

* does not load google homepage in background when the browser is loaded

Of course they provide the source code for your own tinkering as well, just don't hammer the poor fellas (more than they already get hammered right now ;)) as according to their page their current revenue only comes from the ads on the page and hopefully some donations by people showing their appreciation of their work.

Re:The differences

[nephridium]

Just noticed that the source code is hosted on rapidshare - so hammer away and compile ;)

Not Forked Up

[fm6]

Not at all. If you RTFCB you'll know that a major goal of Chrome is to get its technologies and ideas incorporated into other Open Source projects. Actually, that seems to be pretty much the idea, at least at this stage in the product's lifecycle. The product itself is too limited and glitchy for any other purpose. It's not like a lot of people are going to adopt it as their day-to-day browser, not with its minimal feature set and rendering issues.

I suspect the Chrome team is actually quite pleased to see their software adopted by a "competing" project.

I'm no Google fanboy (though I guess I used to be). I'm often quite impatient with their endless betas, their crappy documentation, their buggy products, and their total indifference to the actual software marketplace. But for once I have to admit that they've created something really useful. It's just that the usefulness is not to the end user, it's to the OS developer community.

Re:Fanatical

[Fred_A]

Only fanatics label other fanatics as being fanatical !

Re:Fanatical

[British]

You're right. Here's an idea for safe browsing. Call it the "one time coffee shop" method.

1. Go to coffee shop & browse away
2. after surfing, torch the coffee house.

You can only do this once per coffee shop. Sadly, Starbucks doesn't supply computers since there's an abundance of said shops.

IRC log from Iron

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unfortunate that this guy decided to fork rather than submit bug fixes (or even file bugs). Several of the issues he identified are bugs, not intentional behavior in Chromium. It's supposed to be the case that anything that talks to a third-party server is controllable via preferences and options. He ran into a few that slipped through and decided to do a fork for self-publicity and $$ rather than trying to help the project. I see no problem with having forks in general, but this one seems unnecessary at this point.

Here's an excerpt from an IRC log on chromium-dev from a week ago when people asked him why he wasn't filing bugs or patches:

Iron: because a fork will bring a lot of publicity to my person and my homepage
Iron: that means: a lot of money too ;)
Iron: i dont take money for my fork
Iron: but i have adsense on my page ;)
Iron: a lot of visitor -> a lot of clicka > a lot of money ;)
Iron: we are here in germany
Iron: the press will love my fork
Iron: i talked to much journalists already
Iron: to remove all things in source talking to google ;)
Iron: nobody here trusts google
Iron: the german people say: google is very evil

Re:IRC log from Iron

[bmcage]

link please! I can make up your statement in 1..2..3, why would I believe this?

Re:IRC log from Iron

[Lord Bitman]

Chrome's been out for nearly a month now and I don't see any new release any time "soon".
With such a poor release, I expected new versions to come out the same day yet here we are, weeks later, and no sign that the problems are even on Google's radar.

If I pushed a product to millions of users by linking to it from the front page of the world's most popular website, saying it was "uncrashable", and then it turned out within minutes of real-world uses that no, it's just as easy to crash as any other browser (I've yet to see a "sad tab"), or any of the other major problems, etc- I'd work towards fixing them ASAP. Where is the new release? Where is the new alpha?

Google fucked up. Forking might wake them up. All good forks get merged in the end, anyway.

Re:Fanatical

[Sancho]

A reasonable person, or the average person? I don't think that the average person is reasonable.

The average person cares about having the newest car, the newest TV, a house they can't afford, etc. They want to keep up with the Joneses. They measure their own worth as relative to other people's possessions. Their own happiness depends upon being "better" than other people. That's not reasonable. That's why the American economy is in the mess that it's in. We're a society where the goal is to attain money any way you can. If you don't, you're a failure.

Reasonable? My ass.

You clear your cookies???!?!?!?

[RudeIota]

Delete cookies?!

Re:Fanatical

[RabidMonkey]

I won't pick points, but I don't think it's fair to roll 50% of the population into one bucket and assume things about them, right or wrong.

I'm sure you've never, in your entire life, done anything unreasonable, like wanting something because it looked cool, or sounded cool, or because you wanted to be the first kid on the block to have it, or because all of your friends had one.

All general statements are false.

Editors?

[forand]

So my reading of the original post was that the only thing the editors of Slashdot had added to the submission of Sonnet_XVIII was "Sonnet_XVIII writes." How do you think the editors are responsible for the wording of a submission? Do you assert that a "better" submission was made? It appears to me that you should be annoyed with Sonnet_XVIII not the slashdot editors.

Re:Editors?

[Sonnet_XVIII]

I wrote According to Download Squad. Downloadsquad used the term, I did not mean anything by it. Besides it was my first ever post on slashdot, no offence against anyone. Didn't know the term Fanatical was going to make all the fuss, was hoping to get more comments on the "fork" itself, I mean I thought the news was for Geeks, not philosophers and politicians!! :)

Re:Fanatical? use Opera

[ckaminski]

um, yes, it is. You'll NEVER get the HIV or Herpes from some online website. You can reinstall your computer, there's no do-over button on your life.

Re:Fanatical

[syousef]

You're right. Here's an idea for safe browsing. Call it the "one time coffee shop" method.

1. Go to coffee shop & browse away
2. after surfing, torch the coffee house.

You can only do this once per coffee shop. Sadly, Starbucks doesn't supply computers since there's an abundance of said shops.

I solved that problem by taking my laptop to each of the coffee shops.