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Posted by VanguardLH on December 26, 2008, 9:10 pm
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> "VanguardLH" wrote ...
>>
>> nik wrote:
>>
>>> As for a browser iam currently using Google's Chrome.
>>
>> Before using Chrome, you want to Google around regarding its security.
>> It has features to improve security but then there are gotchas, like:
>>
>> http://notechie.com/google-chrome-inserted-keylogger/
>>
http://jischinger.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/google-chrome-a-keylogger-privacy-concerns/
>>
>> Remember that Google wants to collect as much information as they can.
>> In the copy of Chrome that I installed to trial it inside a virtual
>> machine, the "Use a Suggestion Search" is no longer there as an option
>> when editing search engines (as noted in the 2nd article above). It's
>> been moved to under Options (click on the wrench toolbar icon to get at
>> Options).
>
> Great! We finally came to the day when everythign we type is recorded by our
> browser and then sent away to various other 3rd party analysers.
It's very similar to Google's Toolbar and its "advanced" functions of
PageRank and PageInfo. You have the option to disable those so your URL
clicks don't have you going through their servers to track your use of
Google's match results. I don't remember what the default setting was
for their toolbar for these features. The default for Chrome is to
track your searches. Many folks still use the Google Toolbar but those
that realize the privacy implication of PageRank and PageInfo will turn
those options off.
> IE 8 will incorporate that function too.
Yep, but the default after the IE8 install is OFF. I don't know if
there is any warning regarding privacy considerations when the user
chooses to turn this option on - but then there's Google searching
(which can even be a bane at times to Google regarding their own
products and intent).
> Firefox will embed such keylogger actions to
> iself as well?
I really doubt it. However, Mozilla does gets its funding from Google.
Things could change.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9776759-46.html
> What will we be using then if all companies do the same?
Lynx (a highly simplistic text-only web browser). ;-> nyuk nyuk nyuk
You have to remember that Google didn't create Chrome to be the best or
even a better web browser. They built it to accommodate their web apps.
They needed Javascript to be faster (to compile it instead of interpret
it) to make those webapps faster and more alluring. They needed
multimedia content to render faster for the same reasons. Google's aim
is not to replace FF or IE but to use their webapps to replace
Microsoft's Office. Chrome gives Google a better platform for their
webapps.
As for security, with their Google Earth and now with Google Chrome,
Google has exhibited a dislike for software installation control over
their own products. They want even limited users to be able to alter
the software configuration of whatever host on which they are allowed to
login. Both products "install" (copy) their files under the
%userprofile% path where the user has full permissions, and that
includes the Execute permission. So by dumping their files under the
user's profile path they eliminate the restrictions imposed for normal
software installs or access to the %programfiles% path. While it is
possible to remove the Execute permission from your profile folder (and
for all other account profiles) and propagate the reduction to all child
folders under the assumption that %userprofile% should only be for data
files (documents, configs, logs) and %programfiles% the default locale
for programs, I'm not sure what the impact would be by doing so, plus if
Google can't install there where they know the user has both read/write
and execute permissions then they might just figure out some other
locale to dump their files where the user does those same permissions
(because %programfiles% may be restricted to that user write
permission).
Google isn't the warm fuzzy companion you might think. They have their
goals and are a business that wants to stay in business.
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