Chrome violates privacy

Posted on September 13, 2008. Filed under: Google, News | Tags: chrome, Google, google suggest, omnibox, privacy, violation |

This article is officially at http://imandroid.org/2008/09/13/chrome-violates-privacychrome-violates-privacy/ please check it there..

Chrome, the new Internet Browser by Google, has been criticised for privacy violations.

All you google friends probably using Chrome will know that theres only one text-input box in the browser which google refers to as OmniBox. Other newer versions of IE and Firefox sport two textboxes one for the Target URL and the other for Search.

Google Suggest feature embedded in the OmniBox has created all the stir. The browser acted as a keystroke logger. Whatever text in the OmniBox is sent to google for search queries the results of which are sent back to the browser as google suggest. This is how even the URLs ( websites visited ) along with other associated information like IP address is sent to Google servers.

This “ONE BAR” feature appears to be one of the hallmark features of Chrome. To integrate all information and obtain total control!

Google Suggest has been around for a while in Firefox, IPhone, Google Toolbar. This OMNIBOX is what sparked off the privacy debate because of its all in one nature.

Google reacted in its blog by explaining what actually goes on. 2% of the data queries that are sent via the OmniBox do log associated IP address.

Heres a quote from the blog

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

Experts arent convinced and feel anonymization might now be enough.

For all of us users, who are/should be concerned can switch off the Google Suggest. Go to Google Chrome Options, select Under the Hood tab and uncheck “show suggestions for navigation errors”