Privacy Concerns Over Chrome Omnibox
September 05, 2008 | by Christopher Nickson
Anything you type into the location bar at the top of the Chrome browser could be logged by Google.
If you’re very definite on the issue of privacy, you’ll want to make a few tweaks if you’re a Chrome user.
Currently, according to TechNewsWorld, everything you type in the location bar – be it a URL or search query – could be logged, along with your IP address, by Google. You don’t even have to hit enter.
However, currently only around 2% of that data is being collected, the company insists.
Google spokesperson Carolyn Penner told the news service:
"If Google is set as [the] default search engine, any entry into the Google Chrome Omnibox that returns search results after hitting enter is considered a search query by the browser, sent to Google, and ... stored in our search logs. However, most entries of URLs into the Omnibox will be recognized by the browser as URLs and will return a Web page with that URL. In that case, nothing is stored."
However, there are solutions. You can enjoy browsing without passing on information by turning on the Incognito feature sported by Chrome, or turning off the “suggest” feature. And if you want to eliminate data collection that’s specific to Omnibox search queries, you can simply change the default search engine.
The question there, of course, is what’s the alternative?
Post Your Comment...Comments
Comment on this article
Please keep your comments relevant to this article. Email addresses are not displayed, they are only required to verify you are human.
When you submit your comment, an email will be sent to your email address with a confirmation link. Once you have clicked on that confirmation link your comment will be posted.
HTML is not allowed.
RSS Feed
nmw on Sep 5th, 2008 at 10:25 AM:
Note that Google chrome also downloads a list of website "hash codes" every 30 minutes from google.com, and if you try to visit a website on the list (whether via the bar or via a link), the browser will send that information to Google.com (this is purportedly in order to protect against "security threats", but when I asked about it on Matt Cutt's blog, he did not respond to my question -- so there is definitely cause to be worried about Google's motives concerning how the company seeks to track the web surfing habits of Google chrome users).