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Microsoft Claims Google Chrome Steals Your Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is going on the offensive against Google, accusing the search giant of creating a browser that does not respect user privacy. The company posted a video, embedded below, on TechNet Edge with the following description: 'Watch a demo on how Google Chrome collects every keystroke you make and how Internet Explorer 8 keeps your information private through two address bars and In Private browsing.' Microsoft's first criticism is Chrome's combining the address bar and the search box into a single entry box; IE8 keeps those fields separate. 'By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you're visiting aren't automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else,' says IE product manager Pete LePage."
Even if Chrome -was- violating your privacy, why switch to IE? Especially when there is Firefox... Myself I don't like using Chrome because it is not customizable the way Firefox is. You can't even change history settings on Chrome!
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Did you not read TFA at all ? You can not only choose which search provider to use the search suggestions, you can also turn off search suggestions in chrome !!
Wait a minute. I'm a manager, and I've been reading a lot of case studies and watching a lot of webcasts about The Cloud. Based on all of this glorious marketing literature, I, as a manager, have absolutely no reason to doubt the safety of any data put in The Cloud.
The case studies all use words like "secure", "MD5", "RSS feeds" and "encryption" to describe the security of The Cloud. I don't know about you, but that sounds damn secure to me! Some Clouds even use SSL and HTTP. That's rock solid in my book.
And don't forget that you have to use Web Services to access The Cloud. Nothing is more secure than SOA and Web Services, with the exception of perhaps SaaS. But I think that Cloud Services 2.0 will combine the tiers into an MVC-compliant stack that uses SaaS to increase the security and partitioning of the data.
My main concern isn't with the security of The Cloud, but rather with getting my Indian team to learn all about it so we can deploy some first-generation The Cloud applications and Web Services to provide the ultimate platform upon which we can layer our business intelligence and reporting, because there are still a few verticals that we need to leverage before we can move to The Cloud 2.0.
Personally I rather choose a paid solution where I know my privacy wont be lost and I can save documents, emails, etc on my own hard drive instead of relying on cloud computing and all the marketing and privacy intrusion to make it possible.
You do that. I'll stick with Firefox, thanks.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Umm, the boxes are all controlled by the same program, so whether or not there is physical separation between them (does that have any meaning in a user interface?) has nothing to do with whether or not the data is collected or not.
And you don't understand the problem. This isn't a trust issue with the Chrome application. If it was, you would have lost the battle as soon as you installed it on your computer. This is a privacy problem (a recurring theme with Google's applications).
The issue that MS is pointing out is that because Chrome combines the address bar and the search box, when you start typing hotmidgetoatmealpor, that information is sent directly to Google so they can do auto-completion/auto-searching. Where it is associated with you. And saved. Forever.
In IE, the search box is a separate entity, and you can turn search suggestions on or off for each search provider. Because of this, the only information sent to MS (or whatever search provider you use) is what you type in the search box. You can visit whatever URLs you want to and Bing/Yahoo/Google will never know about them.
Honestly though, I still struggle to figure out what the point of search suggestions are. I suppose they're helpful for people who don't know what they're looking for, but when I go to Google, I already know what I'm going to search for -- that's why I'm there! That said, I suppose it does provide some entertainment.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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All of these settings are hidden in the advanced settings dialog
Bullshit. The search provider option is right on the first options tab. The search suggestions option is at the very top on the last tab (there are only 3 tabs), under the big blue "Privacy" label. Don't damage your own case by exaggerating the facts.
Chrome actually has a bunch of fine-grain privacy controls they added in the last release.
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/more/privacy.html
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
As somebody who personally knows people working on Chrome, I can assure you that data mining was not the goal of Chrome. Most engineers at Google are sincerely trying to make the Web a better place. That this actually helps Google is just a bonus for them.
If a joke is told and no one gets it, does it WHOOSH?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
do you not think that Firefox is becoming the new IE? If I can remember correctly through my drunken history of the last 8 years, Firefox was first promoted as an alternative the bloated Mozilla - and quite rightly so. Recently though, despite all the releases and the announcements on brand new 10x-faster JavaScript interpreters I find it's bogging down to an almost unusable level. .mozilla/firefox/{UID}.profile directory. Now...try running 'strings' on your places.sqlite file and try running strings on the files in the bookmarkbackups directory. Yeh, privacy, HUH?
Once upon a time there used to be configuration to permit or deny javascript to run - now this is split into 12 different parameters, 7 of which are hidden behind the about:config screen. The default is now for pages to be able to open windows hiding the menu and status bar. WTF?
Once upon a time there used to an option to open new pages as a tab or in a new window - now this is split into 2 different parameters (browser.link.open_newwindow and browser.link.open_newwindow_restriction) which make no sense to anybody.
Do you expect 'backspace' to go 'backwards' in your browsing history? Everybody does - on all browsers, except for the Linux release of Firefox - for no understandable reason they decided that the Linux Firefox should do nothing upon pressing backspace, but all other versions should continue the convention.
Do you actively use the overly complicated features of the re-written Bookmarks functionality on Firefox 3.x? I don't, nobody in my office (20 people) does. Everybody hate it.
And lastly... privacy. Firefox 3.x made a real big push for 'privacy'. They said 'you can toggle private browsing on and off' - and 'you can delete browsing history over the last hour, day, month etc..". SUPER LIE. Try deleting your history (everything!) then go to your
The issue that MS is pointing out is that because Chrome combines the address bar and the search box, when you start typing hotmidgetoatmealpor, that information is sent directly to Google so they can do auto-completion/auto-searching. Where it is associated with you. And saved. Forever.
From Google's Privacy Blog (in 2008):
That's what occurs on the surface of Google Suggest. Here's what happens under the hood. To provide its recommendations Google Suggest needs to know what you've already typed, so these partial queries are sent to Google. For 98% of these requests, we don't log any data at all and simply return the suggestions. For the remaining 2% of cases (which we select randomly), we do log data, like IP addresses, in order to monitor and improve the service.
However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use. This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month.
You mean via the same mechanism where you type information into 'Bing', and then 'Bing' responds with your search results?
Most people don't type in 100 character URL's (I don't know of any) they either have it bookmarked, or they search for it via, you guess it, the search engine like Google, Bing, or whatnot.
Um, Firefox's address bar searches your local bookmarks and history. The "suggestions" are from your own locally stored browsing habits, which you can burn to the ground with every exit if you like.
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Toro