Mozilla man sends Firefoxers to Microsoft Bing
Cade Metz reports:
Mozilla director of community development Asa Dotzler – co-founder of the original Firefox project – has encouraged Firefox users to switch their search engine from Google to Microsoft Bing in the wake of Eric Schmidt’s now infamous words on net privacy.
In an interview aired by CNBC on Sunday, the Google boss insisted that anyone who worries about Mountain View retaining personal data must be guilty of improper behavior. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” he said.
“If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”
In a post to his personal blog Thursday morning, ten-year Mozilla vet Asa Dotzler quoted Schmidt in full before indicating that he’s not too happy with the Googler’s haughty take on data retention.
Read more in The Register.
Google safe browsing feature could compromise privacy
Turns out a browser security extension from Google for Chrome and Firefox browsers can actually put user privacy at risk, according to a researcher here at the Black Hat USA conference.
Robert “RSnake” Hansen, CEO of SecTheory LLC, says he discovered that Google’s Safe Browsing anti-phishing and anti-malware feature for Chrome and Firefox actually gathers and stores data about the user’s machine and browsing habits that could potentially be abused by an attacker or even incriminate the user in a legal case.
“It’s a time capsule on anyone who ever did anything in Chrome or Firefox … they can be de-anonymized way after the fact, months or years after using those browsers and the settings are turned off,” Hansen says.
Read more on Dark Reading.
Firefox 3.5 boosts speed, privacy
June 30, 2009 by Dissent
Filed under Internet, Legislation
Mozilla on Tuesday released a Web browser that it said is 10 times faster than its original browser. One year after releasing Firefox 3.0, the Mountain View, Calif.-based nonprofit released Firefox 3.5, which it said is two times faster than Firefox 3.0 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2.
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Similar to Microsoft Relevant Products/Services’s Internet Explorer 8 browser, Firefox 3.5 allows users to browse the Internet in private mode. The feature was developed to let users protect their privacy while browsing online, and to give them greater control over their personal data Relevant Products/Services.
While using the Private Browsing feature, nothing viewed on the Web will be stored on the user’s computer. Another feature called Forget this Site allows users to remove every trace of a site from the Firefox 3.5 browser.
Read more on Top Tech News.