

Google Chrome privacy worse than you think - coderrr
http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/google-chrome-privacy-worse-than-you-think/

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yan
The difference between other vendors here is that you can just remove that
feature from the source and distribute it to people who care. It is BSD
licensed after all.

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coderrr
true, you can also turn it off in the options

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Ravenlock
I would assume this also happens every time I search on Google with ANY
browser, if I also happen to be logged into GMail from the same computer at
that time. The auto-complete there, I imagine, works the same way as it does
in Chrome.

Not going to let it keep me from using either one, though obviously (this is
the... 4th? OMG Chrome security! post on YC in 2 days) it's going to be a hot
button issue for awhile.

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coderrr
The difference is you don't type in www.somedirtypornsite.com into the
google.com search box. You type it into the location bar. This is the first
time a browser is auto searching from the location bar.

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pqs
Many people use google's main site as a location bar. I've seen this quite
often, even among people working in science and holding a PhD. It's not only
my granny.

After writing this comment I saw another comment
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=294070> of a person that says he does
this. So it must be quite common.

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coderrr
If you are typing a url into google.com's search box the expectation already
exists that google.com will have this data.

If you are typing a url into your browser's location bar, you aren't going to
assume google.com will have it.

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pqs
Google is changing this game.

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scott_s
I often use Google instead of typing in a URL because it requires less typing
anyway, so this changes nothing for me.

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pqs
Just don't log into google and remove cookies each time you restart the
browser (I guess you can configure this, I don't have windows, so I couldn't
try). If you have a dynamic IP you should be quite safe. But I'm not an expert
at all.

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coderrr
you can actually just turn the feature off in the options

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invisible
This is a repost from the same topic as this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=293947>

Perhaps the dumbest thing of all is bloggers don't actually read up before
posting blogs like this particular one. One of the developers debunked the
idea, he listed when the browser communicates with Google ( here:
<http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-communication/> ), and he
insisted that they hold no rights in a public blog post that can be cited by
any two-bit lawyer from the way-back-machine. Scandalous of them, huh?

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coderrr
This isn't a repost of the EULA article and has nothing to do with who holds
the rights to content. It only has a little in common with Matt's post. Matt
mentions that Chrome will communicate with the search engine when typing in
the location bar, but he does not discuss any of the implications of that.

Perhaps the dumbest thing of all is commenters who don't actually read up
before posting comments like this particular one.

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invisible
My mistake - but I think I have less responsibility as a commenter than a
blogger should have as reporting a supposed truth and then circulating that. I
saw the topic looked similar, read the first two paragraphs and thought it was
going to be another dialog about how 'bad' the policies are. I wasn't too far
off after re-reading it: There is a freaking setting to turn this off. It
might be the default setting, but there are a lot of bad default things:
Internet Explorer, for example.

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coderrr
So is your argument that bad default things are ok if there is a setting to
turn them off? or: That since there are a lot of bad default things already we
shouldn't write/care about any new ones?

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invisible
My argument is neither. I am saying that people shouldn't be complaining about
a feature that is common sense: You can't get search results without
searching. Plus, it's not by design that you're forced. It's on to benefit the
end-user not damper their experience and steal their information (even if that
is in fact part of their overall agenda). One might find more to complain
about stores and shopping malls that sell your information and purchase
history: the only solution to those is to not shop there.

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run4yourlives
meh. I suppose if this level of hyper-privacy is required by the user, you
shouldn't be using any google product, or MS product, or Apple product.

Me, I couldn't care less if google knows that I visited awsomenekkidpics.com
or whatever.

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coderrr
naked kid pics huh? i hope for your sake they don't know about that one :P

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run4yourlives
hehe... good one.

Memories of www.molestationnursery.com and www.therapistfinder.com...

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boredguy8
expertsexchange was my favorite.

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sabat
Blogga please.

