Microsoft Claims Google Chrome Steals Your Privacy 522
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."
Microsoft privacy policy (Score:3, Informative)
Has anyone ever tried to implment the Microsoft privacy policy? Here is one guy who did. [privacy.net]
Re:Correct (Score:4, Informative)
I'm assuming you didn't actually read the article because you wanted to look like a jackass.
And what did you wanted me to read about it? This?
We downloaded Fiddler to make some comparisons of our own. As we suspected, Chrome can be set to send information on every keystroke to Bing (or any other search engine that supports Search Suggestions) instead of Google. The same behavior occurs in IE8, but only in the search bar. LePage is only correct in his assertion that IE8 does not send information to anyone when the user types into the address bar.
The last sentence is a major point.
Re:Bogus argument (Score:5, Informative)
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 [googlelolz.com].
Re:Look.... (Score:5, Informative)
Bu not Opera Mini, which routes all your traffic through their proxys. http://www.opera.com/mobile/help/faq/#security [opera.com] (third question).
Re:Correct (Score:2, Informative)
Except that they filter out any user data and passwords when they publish the search terms. Any other situation would have generated a huge outcry by now. Try finding any login information this way yourself and you'll notice it can't be found.
Re:Not Correct (Score:5, Informative)
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 [google.com]
Re:Look.... (Score:2, Informative)
And when you looked closer, you saw that Flash was taking up 99% of those resources in Firefox.
Re:this is news? (Score:3, Informative)
YOU CAN TURN IT OFF. (Score:5, Informative)
Or am I missing something major here? Is it possible that most people on
Easy Fix (Score:2, Informative)
Preferences -> Under the Hood -> Uncheck "Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar"
Re:Look.... (Score:3, Informative)
I love Chrome because it's so fast and doesn't have all the bloat that's crept into Firefox. It's more stable than Firefox and I like the single search bar. Granted, I still think it could use improvement in a number of areas, but Firefox also has a lot of really annoying quirks to it.
On my netbook I will only use Chrome. It's far more efficient with the limited screen real estate than Firefox, plus with the slower processor the difference is night and day.
Something is really wrong if Chrome is so slow on your setup. For me, it's much much faster than Firefox, especially when I have a lot of tabs open.
The difference is even more apparent on my I7 desktop. Firefox seems to be single threaded whereas Chrome will make use of all of the cores and threads.
-Aaron
Re:Bogus argument (Score:1, Informative)
"And Saved. Forever." is FUD. Google has a 9 month retention policy for search data: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/another-step-to-protect-user-privacy.html
Re:Bogus argument (Score:5, Informative)
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 [blogspot.com] (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.
Suggestion service can be disabled (Score:2, Informative)
You can un-check the option to use the auto-completion suggestion service for anything you type in the omnibox. Its under Options->Under the hood. At least, that's the case for the latest beta releases. I just started using Chrome and have only used the latest beta software, which is extremely stable.
Re:Look.... (Score:1, Informative)
Trust me, it's slow as balls EVERYWHERE. It sits there at "resolving host" for anywhere from 2-3 seconds to 60 seconds or more before I give up. Sometimes the page loads, sometimes I close the browser in disgust.. and when the page DOES load, it's so slow loading that I want to claw my brains out. here's the background color. wait for it... Here's an ad at the top. wait some more... Here's the left frame. wait a little bit more, ah here is the page text.
I'm running this on a 3.8ghz multi-core cpu with 4gb of ram under a modern 64bit OS, but chrome makes me feel like I've got dialup in 1998 again.
Facebook
Wikipedia
CNN
Slashdot
Google(!!!)
I'm not hitting obscure sites here.
I just went and got a stopwatch (ok, I used my Droid's stopwatch app) to time it here. Chrome took 42.837 seconds to load facebook's login page. not my home page with tons of updates, graphics etc. the LOGIN page. Firefox loaded the same page in 1.112 seconds. Bit of a difference there.
Even reloading forum pages I've got open (i.e. 90% of the page is cached, and the rest is simple text) is an exercise in frustration.
I don't know what Chrome's problem is, but I don't care to ever find out because I've got FF handy which works wonderfully.
Re:Look.... (Score:3, Informative)
I think there must be something funky in your setup. Like, really...lol. Chrome is blazing fast where I am - on work computers, on my laptop (under both Windows 7 and Arch Linux). Firefox, on the other hand, feature-packed as it can be, is a bloated nightmare, chewing up RAM, and lagging like molasses. It's fine when your number of tabs is low (I think I'm not the only one, popular consensus with me is on this, pretty much everybody that tries it finds Chrome to be faster - feature-lacking yeah, but synthetic benchmarks as well as user experiences all show it to be meaningfully more performant.
Cheers, Victor
Re:Look.... (Score:4, Informative)
No, actually I didn't look closer, because it doesn't really matter specifically which part of the application or which plugin is causing the problems, does it? The end result is the same. If Flash was such a problem then I would expect the same memory usage in every browser using Flash. In fact, considering the fact that other browsers use the exact same plugin which Firefox does for Flash, but don't exhibit the same problems, doesn't that sort of rule out Flash alone as the culprit? Wouldn't it be more likely that the problem is a combination between Firefox and something else? The common denominator is Firefox, not Flash.
SRWare Iron = Chrome without the privacy issues (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Correct (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not Correct (Score:1, Informative)
People might not go into the "Options" screen, but anyone doing something they want private has a fair chance of using the "incognito" feature which has all of that type of stuff disabled.
Personally, I think the URL suggestion thing is helpful and will continue to use it.
*source code* (Score:5, Informative)
What a lame attempt, microsoft ...
1) - If you use explorer, you are using windows. The chances of someone exploiting your browser and getting access to all your files is 90%
- You can use Chrome in Mac or GNU/Linux. Both Chrome and your OS keep your data secure
2) - I have the source code for Chrome (Chromium) and I can study it, make sure it's safe, or change whatever I want. Also, I know the community has reviewed it, and the company is not trying to hid anything behind a binary
- I don't have the source of explorer, and microsoft has a huge history of phoning home and spying on users
3 - Chrome is standards compliant, so there's no vendor tie-in. If I find something I don't like, I can move on to another browser
- Explorer is platform specific, and non compliant with standards. That means, if I develop anything for it, it'll probably be incompatible with other browsers and moving away will be hard.
Sorry microsoft, Google published the source code for their browser, it's well developed, multi-platform, they'll take my patches and if they are good implement them on their source, and they are open and transparent about everything the browser does. They are doing all the right things, and I just love this browser.
So...Use Iron (Score:3, Informative)
Use SRWare's Iron.
It's google Chrome without the reporting bits (and actually with newer rendering java, so it's actually faster).
It's screamingly fast, and emulates IE-dedicated pages (including nasties like MS Webmail) far better than Firefox. I love it.
Re:Correct (Score:3, Informative)
Not really.
username:password@www.whatever.net is something you might type into the url bar that would pose a very real security threat when shared. Google search terms are automatically published and your login information would be accessible to anyone.
Considering that Internet explorer stopped supporting that method of sending credentials in 2004, I don't think its an issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834489 [microsoft.com].
Re:So then what do you recommend? (Score:3, Informative)
So then what is a good browser? I do value privacy so I don't use Chrome (I figure google can have either my search history or web browsing history but not both, and adblock for Chrome really sucks). I hate ads so I don't use Opera (the adblock solution also sucks). I don't care about bloat, but I do care about speed, and firefox is the slowest of the main browsers I use (I do not use IE8). The four things I care about are security, ad-blocking, speed, and privacy. It looks like this is another case of "choose 3 out of 4".
1. Take off the tin foil hat and spend 5 seconds disabling whatever it is that offends you in the clearly labeled and displayed Privacy settings in Chrome.
2. Download a good hosts adblocking file [someonewhocares.org].
3. Download a good extension that'll hide the blocked elements and text ads [google.com].
4. Enjoy using a blazingly fast and responsive, free browser.
Or if you're still paranoid that Google is using Chrome to hijack your life, you could even do this:
1. Download Opera.
2. Use this guy's stuff [fanboy.co.nz].
Re:Look.... (Score:3, Informative)
Don't use Windows, I use ubuntu 9.04
The most likely explanation for your troubles is the problem that recent Ubuntu releases have with IPv6 with some non-conformant (but very common) home routers. Here [launchpad.net] is the Launchpad bug for this.
If so, the reason why Firefox works fine for you in the meantime may be that you have network.dns.disableIPv6 option enabled in it (check in about:config).
Re:Not Correct (Score:3, Informative)
Role based Web Browers (Score:1, Informative)
I only use Chrome for surfing porn, because it helps to have all the cookies, etc, enabled and safe from IE exploits. Because I only use it for porn, I'm not worried about cookie crossover from porn sites to email/banking/slashdot/etc.
I use Firefox for all of my serious browsing - i.e. anything that isn't porn and requires a password - because I can use "Request Policy" and "NoScript."
For casual browsing, I use IE but I have everything disabled (no javascript, no active x, etc.)
I encourage others to do the same... let chrome be the default browser for all your porn and return to firefox (with all of those lovely addons to give real security) for your serious stuff.
Re:*source code* (Score:4, Informative)
Did you even read the article? Did you even read the summary?
Yes, you may be able to get the source of Chrome, but you don't have the source of the search provider that it connects to. Microsoft's point is that if you're using Chrome, any URL you type in is sent to Google (by default, anyway) and you don't know what happens to information when it gets there.
Re:Correct (Score:2, Informative)