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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Internet Explorer 8's privacy feature is not private

Soleron on 02 September 2008

http://www.itworld.com/internet/54575/privacy-feature-internet-explorer-8-leaks-private-data

Key parts of the article (bold emphasis mine):

"The privacy option in this beta is mainly cosmetic. For a forensic investigator, retrieving the browsing history should be regarded as peanuts," said Christian Prickaerts, forensic IT expert with Fox IT.

"The remaining records in the history file still enable me to deduce which websites have been visited," said Prickaerts.Even more data is stored in the browser's cache, a feature [which stores] a copy of recently accessed information on a user's hard disk. InPrivate Browsing failed to disable this feature.

The shortcomings in InPrivate Browsing put the level of privacy protection in Internet Explorer 8 on a par with Firefox 2 and 3.

--

So, IE8's hyped "privacy feature" doesn't offer more protection than Firefox 2 did, a browser released in 2006. The easiest way to remain private on the internet is still to disable cache and history, disable all scripts and plugins like Java/Flash, use Tor to hide the source of your traffic and use digital-signature-verified encryption on as many connections as possible. Anything less than that exposes you to possible malicious or unwanted collection of your data.

If you add this to the fact that IE8's rendering engine is also broken and its memory and processor use is far higher than Firefox, it seems IE8 will not be a revolution in Microsoft's browser history. 

EDIT: Since they plan to release in 2008, they've got to fix a severely broken rendering engine, the memory leaks, the performance issues on older (i.e. most) machines and the privacy issues in less than four months. That's not going to happen.



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JaggedSac on 02 September 2008

It is a Beta.



Soleron on 02 September 2008
JaggedSac said:
It is a Beta.

 

Since they plan to release in 2008, they've got to fix a severely broken rendering engine, the memory leaks, the performance issues on older (i.e. most) machines and the privacy issues in less than four months. That's not going to happen.



drpunk on 02 September 2008

If someone wants to know what porn I'm looking at, let them.

They only need to ask anyway.



JaggedSac on 02 September 2008
Soleron said:
JaggedSac said:
It is a Beta.

 

Since they plan to release in 2008, they've got to fix a severely broken rendering engine, the memory leaks, the performance issues on older (i.e. most) machines and the privacy issues in less than four months. That's not going to happen.

 

It is a Beta.  Maybe they will, maybe they won't.



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Grey Acumen on 02 September 2008

Did IE suddenly get Noscript and Adblock while I wasn't looking that it becomes as secure as Firefox 2 and 3?



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bdbdbd on 02 September 2008
Grey Acumen said:
Did IE suddenly get Noscript and Adblock while I wasn't looking that it becomes as secure as Firefox 2 and 3?

 

Atleast it got some sort of adblock.



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Soleron on 02 September 2008
Grey Acumen said:
Did IE suddenly get Noscript and Adblock while I wasn't looking that it becomes as secure as Firefox 2 and 3?

 

The expert means "vanilla" Firefox 2/3. A lot of users who aren't technically aware will not know that they can increase their privacy by installing these add-ons. I would add Torbutton to that list too.



iamfanboy on 02 September 2008
Soleron said:

http://www.itworld.com/internet/54575/privacy-feature-internet-explorer-8-leaks-private-data

Key parts of the article (bold emphasis mine):

"The privacy option in this beta is mainly cosmetic. For a forensic investigator, retrieving the browsing history should be regarded as peanuts," said Christian Prickaerts, forensic IT expert with Fox IT.

"The remaining records in the history file still enable me to deduce which websites have been visited," said Prickaerts.Even more data is stored in the browser's cache, a feature [which stores] a copy of recently accessed information on a user's hard disk. InPrivate Browsing failed to disable this feature.

The shortcomings in InPrivate Browsing put the level of privacy protection in Internet Explorer 8 on a par with Firefox 2 and 3.

--

So, IE8's hyped "privacy feature" doesn't offer more protection than Firefox 2 did, a browser released in 2006. The easiest way to remain private on the internet is still to disable cache and history, disable all scripts and plugins like Java/Flash, use Tor to hide the source of your traffic and use digital-signature-verified encryption on as many connections as possible. Anything less than that exposes you to possible malicious or unwanted collection of your data.

If you add this to the fact that IE8's rendering engine is also broken and its memory and processor use is far higher than Firefox, it seems IE8 will not be a revolution in Microsoft's browser history.

EDIT: Since they plan to release in 2008, they've got to fix a severely broken rendering engine, the memory leaks, the performance issues on older (i.e. most) machines and the privacy issues in less than four months. That's not going to happen.

IE6 still has memory leaks.  IE6 and IE7 have serious performance issues when browsing DHTML pages and in general.  IE7 can nearly cripple a system running XP Pro.  I expect nothing less from IE8 ;)



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Bitmap Frogs on 02 September 2008

Just use firefox or opera.





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