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Inside Safari 3.2's Anti-Phishing Feature
MacWorld is running a piece from MacJournals.com's for-pay publication detailing how the Safari browser's anti-phishing works. The article takes Apple to task for not thinking enough of its users to bother telling them when Safari sends data off to a third party on their behalf. For it seems that Safari uses the same Google-based anti-phishing technology that Firefox has incorporated since version 2.0, but, unlike Mozilla, tells its users nothing about it. "Even when phrased as friendly to Apple as we can manage, the fact remains that after installing Safari 3.2, your computer is by default downloading lots of information from Google and sending information related to sites you visit back to Google — without telling you, without Apple disclosing the methods, and without any privacy statement from Apple."
In Apple's defense, they've never promised to do no evil. Their goal is to instill such unswerving devotion in their customer base that when they actually do some evil, it's here and gone in the news, and nothing has to change.
So far, so good.
The google service is designed to minimize privacy leaks. It downloads a coarse-hashcheck database (so Google learns nothing). And then if something hits, it queries a detailed hash.
So unless you get a match on the coarse-hash database, Google learns NOTHING. And google only learns a hash if it matches, which is not very useful, AND google doesn't store this information unless it is a match with their detailed database.
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"The google service is designed to minimize privacy leaks. It downloads a coarse-hashcheck database (so Google learns nothing). And then if something hits, it queries a detailed hash."
The problem is the lack of disclosure.
I know Apple is based in the USA, with notoriously weak data protection laws, but over on this side of the pond distributing personally-identifiable information to a third party without explicit consent is a criminal offence. I wonder how close to the line this comes, or if it actually crosses it. I wasn't asked to agree to a new version of the EULA when I installed Safari 3.2 (I did it through the terminal, so maybe you are when you use the graphical update client?) and so I haven't even given implicit permission for Apple to tell Google about my browsing habits.
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Remember, the people who designed the Internet (incorrectly) assumed that all computers on the network would be trustworthy, so the rules are pretty loose.
C'mon, Macworld is better than this. Okay, the article is critically reviewing the anti-phishing feature, but the writer seems to have a bone to pick and in order to post an emotionally charged article, takes things one step too far.
The internet was intentionally designed, itself, not to have a centralized authorizing body for each and every PC and server on the planet. It's decentralized on purpose. When a so called journalist writes something like this, I have a problem, because to me it's just pandering to the security freaks. It's a bit off topic, but I also have a problem reading the rest of the article because it makes it hard to trust what the guy has to say. There's probably good facts in the article, and if there's a problem Apple should be criticized, but I can't possibly continue reading when I see something stupid like this.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
First off, because it drives me nuts, it is "couldn't care less". (Cue picking on grammar errors in this post. Maybe I'll drop a couple in intentionally!)
Secondly there is adblock (and flashblock) for Safari in the form or SafariBlock, or if you don't care for Input Managers there's always things like GlimmerBlocker which is a local HTTP Proxy which will block ads (and flash and do other fancy things) across the whole system and not just one browser.
You've got it backwards. There is no longer an option to check as you browse and the check against the local list has always been the default.
Our AdRater plug-in has similar privacy issues. It's a plug-in that "phones home" to get information about the advertisers whose ads appear on a site. Here's what we tell users:
AdRater "phones home", but tells us as little as possible. AdRater sends the domain name associated with each advertisement you see to SiteTruth. Thus, we can tell what advertisers have reached you, but cannot tell what web pages you have been viewing. We can't tell if you click on an ad. AdRater does not use "cookies" or any other user identifiable information other than your current IP address.
If we change any of this, the changes will not take effect until you download and install a new version of AdRater.
AdRater does not rate ads on secure pages, so no information about a secure page is ever sent to our servers.
Now that wasn't hard, was it?
For really technical users, we publish the API AdRater uses, so you can check to see that we're telling the truth about what data goes back and forth.
Have you tried SafariBlock? http://fsbsoftware.com/index.html Works pretty well for me.
A lot of you seem to love Apple
I use Safari because it's well integrated with OS X. Firefox isn't, and Camino (which I use by preference) has a couple of bugs that are supposed to be fixed Real Soon Now that make it lock up behind a proxy and don't let me disable Apple's stupid insecurity dialogs.
I also use Safari and Camino because they don't use XUL the way Firefox does. I don't trust the security model for XUL nor the technique Firefox uses for the XUL installer, XPI. And in fact there's been at least one XPI-related vulnerability (quickly patched, but it shows that the class of problems I'm concerned about are real).
This doesn't mean I love Apple, or that I think the folks on the Camino team are cooler than the ones on the Mozilla team. This just means I'm more interested in the best tool for the job than where it comes from.
Just use Firefox and be done with it...
Um, you realize that Firefox uses the exact same anti-phishing technology, right? If you prefer Firefox, that's great but as far as this particular issue goes the difference is disclosure, not implementation. I like Firefox, but Safari is faster and less of a CPU and memory hog on OS X in my experience. And the integration is better - so I'll stick with Safari (although I skipped 3.2 because of all the crash complaints and I use FF for serious HTML/DOM/JavaScript hacking.)
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
I fail to see how this is a big deal. Did you read the article? If so, you would not panic as well.
First of all, everything is transported in hashes. You do not compare the actual URLs that customers visit, only the hashes. Google has no actual links that indicate the banks that you use and the pr0n sites you have browsed. Only hashes.
Also, this is a configurable option. Apple does not force you to use Google. Apple does not force you to use this feature. I think it would be easier if Apple has explained this feature in the release notes to a greater extent and if users had to accept some sort of a license agreement when enabling this feature. Nothing else beyond it.
Read TFA -- or at least TFS, FFS.
This article is about an anti-phishing feature in Safari that compromises your privacy.
Your solution is to switch to Firefox, which has the exact same feature enabled by default.
Aside from sheer Firefox fanboyism, what's your point?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It does, however, present it in a non-technical way first:
AdRater "phones home", but tells us as little as possible.
For many users, that says it all.
AdRater sends the domain name associated with each advertisement you see to SiteTruth.
A domain name is pretty common knowledge. Even if it isn't, now you know some information is going to something called SiteTruth.
Thus, we can tell what advertisers have reached you, but cannot tell what web pages you have been viewing. We can't tell if you click on an ad.
Again, non-technical.
It seems like a non-technical user could read this and understand enough to decide whether or not they need to care -- and if they need to care, they can ask for help understanding it. Us technical users are grateful that all the relevant information about IP addresses, domain names, and cookies are all right there, so we don't have to go digging for clues as to what the "non-technical" marketspeak might mean.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
to repeat what i said on the macworld article's comment board,
sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Hosts/safebrowsing.clients.google.com IPAddress 127.0.0.1
(or do the obvious with /etc/hosts if you're still running tiger (not that i know if safari 3.2 is available for tiger....))
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg