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Browser Privacy Test
lazyforker writes "A NYTimes blog post reports the results of security researcher Kate McKinley's tests of various browsers' (FireFox, Chrome, IE, Safari) privacy protection mechanisms. Specifically she tested their cookie handling. She also examined their handling of Flash's cookies. In summary: Safari on Mac OS X (in the 'private browsing' mode) is not so private ('quirky'). Safari on XP is not private at all. Flash behaves awfully everywhere."
Those bastards! Quick, somebody report Sourceforge!
Om nom nom nom nom!!!
My undies are blue.
:(
I'm secretly in love with my best friend's wife, but I like gay midget porn.
[preview]
Damn, Firefox privacy test failed
Flash behaves awfully everywhere
FlashBlock
NoScript works too but I find it sort of annoying because it stops half the web from working.
Under what circumstances does Flash not behave awfully? Despite being a Linux fan, and more than a little cold on Microsoft (though I did buy an Xbox 360 - matter of price at the time...), I almost hope Silverlight takes off so Adobe have some serious, commercially driven competition for Flash. Maybe then they won't take their user base for granted and; oh I don't know, maybe put some work into making Flash GOOD?
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
11. ...
12. Profit!
I was just wondering who Kate McKinley really is. Most of all, I am skeptical as to whether she is even qualified to be called a "security researcher" at all.
Why? Because Wikipedia returns no hits for "Kate McKinley" and a Google search returns results that are sketchy or even anemic when it comes to browser security at best.
May be I should also put up my own research...may be, then call my self a "Security researcher."
Microsoft's Internet Explorer, as the mos tpopular browser, disproves tha tpopularity does not equate to the perception of security.
A better basis for the selection of browsers would be to select those thought to be secure. That would eliminate IE and Safari at the start, and it might even add Opera.
For windows users you should delete everything in this folder: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player
Posting this anonymously, for reasons that will soon be evident.
Here's a really nasty privacy bug in konqueror. Let's say you visit gaymidgetsex.com. Then you go to View : View Document Source. Well, on my default install of Ubuntu, this doesn't actually show you the html source code of the web page. Instead, it downloads the html file to /tmp and opens it in OpenOffice, which attempts to render it as an OpenOffice document -- it doesn't actually show you the html source, which is what you asked it to do. Okay, so now you have gay midget porn open in an OOo document, which isn't what you wanted. So you close the OOo window.
Now the next time you start Ooo, go to File : Recent Documents. Oops.
Now, I'm posting this from Konqueror on Linux as god intended and all that; but http://windows.kde.org/ is the place to look if you want Konqueror goodness on Windows. Quite possibly still in the rough edges stage, but a large amount of KDE 4 stuff is being brought over to Windows.
It's spelled spelled.
That is, unless you're British.
No existe.
I like your logic: Aside from a single tile, Columbia's last mission went flawlessly.
Seriously, though: you've underlined the single greatest problem in computer security today - what we don't see can hurt us. I've written about this at greater length elsewhere, but to put it simply, privacy is the battleground of our decade.
The struggle to come to terms with privacy will manifest itself in the legal, moral and ethical arenas, but it arises now because of technology and the cavalier approach that the vast majority of people take to it.
The ramifications of our ability to transmit, access and synthesise vast amounts of data using technology are consistently underestimated by people because of the simple fact that, as far as they're concerned, they are sitting in the relative privacy of their own room with nothing but the computer screen as an intermediary.
On the consumer side of things, this creates what Schneier calls a Market for Lemons in which the substance of the product becomes less valuable than its appearance. As long as we have the illusion of security, we don't worry about the lack of real protection.
On the institutional side, we see countless petty abuses of people's privacy. There is nothing stopping a low-level employee from watching this data simply out of prurient interest. In fact, this kind of abuse happens almost every time comprehensive surveillance is conducted. In a famous example, low-level staffers in the US National Security Agency would regularly listen in on romantic conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their wives at home. The practice became so common that some even created 'Greatest Hits' compilations of their favourites and shared them with other staffers.
They would never have done so had the people in question been in the room, but because the experience is intermediated by an impersonal computer screen, which can inflict no retribution on them, their worst instincts get the better of them.
When discussing software in the 21st Century, we cannot ever treat privacy as just one incidental aspect of a greater system. Privacy defines the system. Starting an argument by throwing it aside in the first subordinate clause gives little weight to any argument that follows.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Safari's "Private browsing" mode is not intended to keep info on your computer (e.g. previous cookies etc) from being sent to web servers. It is intended for the reverse - to keep the details of your browsing session private from others who might access your account using that computer. I.e. it merely prevents records being kept about your browsing session.
clear private data on close ..
davecb5620@gmail.com