There are several warnings on the Internet about the new web browser put out by Google recently. Among them is the German Federal Office for Information Security, which has issued a security warning for this new browser.
Some people even called the new browser ‘spyware’ and quote the wikipedia definition: ‘Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user’s interaction with the computer, without the user’s informed consent.‘
According to research done by the German Federal Office for Information Security and other parties, the new Google Browser attaches a unique user identification to every user/installation. This identification along with the users Internet behaviour is then regularly sent to Google. Google on the otherhand is known to collect information and to use it for their own purposes. Some people even report that the browser redirects them to addresses they did not type in. As I doubt that this is a behaviour most users will concent to Chrome comes damn close to the definition of spyware, if it doesn’t actually fall right into it.
I am sure Google will be correcting some of the more obvious spy routines, but I am not sure whether I can trust such a powerful information gatherer to actually also have control over my surf behaviour.
1 Comment
Mark · January 5, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Personally I’m still sticking with Firefox, mainly because of all it’s addons. I like what I’ve seen of google chrome, and will probably give it another go once it is out of beta (All Google software comes out of beta eventually, doesn’t it? :P)