What are the security concerns with Chrome? (Page 2 of 2)

omns, thanks for clarifying that.

Now how do you factor in "not wrong" but things that do shape how you will be marketed at either personally or via friend recommendations (now that much of this is being done through the online social graph, which Google has invested itself a lot in lately) and it is something you/we/everyone should be thinking about.

For example let's use medical conditions. Let's say I am interested in finding out about researching something so I use a search engine. Normal enough. There's that data point which will then be shared for targeted marketing from pharmaceutical companies. Whatever, it's annoying but I'm used that since it's almost always been like that.

Here's what's newer about it though- the use of those within my entire social graph (friends, family, acquaintances and business contacts) to help tailor a marketing plan to me.

What happens when simply browsing an article has left a "kilroy was here" marker with my name and avatar on the site showing what I'm reading because I forgot to log out of another site that's friend connected? What if my browsing habits are used to suggest a 'helpful' (and probably underwritten) article as suggested reading to my closest contacts, or a much worse case, casual or potential business contacts so they can sideways market to me? 

Google/Facebook. etc. and the advertisers using them probably know more about me than I do at this point, but that doesn't mean that I want every aspect of my life broadcasted to every single person everyone I know, just to make a few more dollars. But this is where we are in a lot of ways already and we are headed to even more intrusiveness, so while online profiling for advertising doesn't affect some at people all, it affects others a great deal. And non-participation is not really an option.

Last edited by chillicampari (2011-01-15 22:04:18)

For me the question is "what" does chrome do with your browsing history/cached content?  Anyone with any hard facts, would be greatly appreciated.  Its clear that Google services analyze cached content and manipulate(I like that awebb) content dynamically based on that. Like illumin8 stated any browser is gonna give you those results.  Outside of address bar based searches being piped into google's autocomplete search feature, I'm not sure exactly what else chrome does.  I don't like the idea of it updating withought me knowing.  Can it do that in a Linux filesystem?  Isn't that what the google apt repo is for, to update it?  Being a proprietary black box it's impossible to say what it actually does, especially since the time It'd take to reverse engineer it, it will already be updated and different.  Now, if it does something terribly malicious, this is even found in opensource projects like OpenBSD, with the netsec backdoor. 

Not to stray from the topic, but I feel that the OpenSource world has its flaws like mentioned above in the OpenBSD plug.  If a human hand has touched it, it's not perfect.  Like the GNU licenses and what not.  They don't seem truly free because of the "but" involved in copy-lefting.  The BSD liscensing seems almost perfect because there is no "buts" involved.  True freedom has no restrictions what so ever, no requirements.  There is probably something in there that messes it up though(edit: BSDL).  Anyways, I thought about that a lot over Xmas, and I maybe totally wrong/ignorant on the GPL etc.  Which all that brings me to my kind of vibe/ life movement.  I just can't live in fear or everything will suck.  Just do the best with the knowledge that's been granted me, pick and choose battles.  Until I know chrome is trully borkin me I'll keep using it because it works great.

@awebb, your discipline is awesome.. keep up the good work.. stay happy

@campari love your scenarios.. you've got a gift for writing

@illumin8 Your a haus bro, like how you broke down what security is.. and not to confuse it with privacy

edit: @omns sorry to leave you out pal when I was really thinking this earlier.  I appreciate the environment you created for discussion, while evading strife.  These discussions are good and give us all such an opportunity to grow.

Last edited by rstrcogburn (2011-01-15 00:55:12)

So the key in this situation is not to engage with the social wheel/profle concept if you don't want to. Like Buzz and Wave, Google might find this idea doesn't take off as much as they think it will. I've never activated my Google profile and see don't any benefit in doing so. I think what is important here is that social wheel setups like Google Profiles and Facebook always have choices to participate or not. Our role then should as Awebb described and provide enough informed discussion for people to make meaningful and informed choices about their online interactions.

No need for a PM, I know exactly what you mean. My real life requires that I have to be very careful about how my public profile is perceived as well

What about using 'Iron Browser'?

@ Hanna way back on the first page you said that you thought that chrome was ugly. you can get skins like Firefox and spoof it up a bit (i hate chrome the way that it comes)

i use chrome and i find it much more reliable then internet explorer and Firefox. Firefox is to slow and internet explorer just sucks! (Microsoft)

I do not get any spam mails.
And I don't miss them.

/

I wouldn't say I'm overly concerned with privacy. I use facebook, gmail, and  even a hotmail (gasp!) address I made well over a decade ago. All of the stuff I do in gmail and on facebook I am very much aware isn't private. Most of the stuff that I spend my hard earned money on is really cool and difficult to come by too so if google wants to advertise it they're more than welcome! I still don't like the idea of a browser collecting anonymous statistics about the sites I browse without my explicit approval though. Doesn't mozilla also send anonymous usage statistics to google as well? I always figured if you are super concerned about privacy it's best to use something like midori.