On Wed, 2008-06-18 at 08:13 -0700, bruce wrote:
the issue of the FF security measures (and others) is that the data on the URLs you visit might go back to a 3rd party company (IE google),
google claims that they're not going to do anything with the data, but there's nothing to stop them if they do.
Like we believe that... (about a company who's stated aim was to database everything). I think it's more of a concern what they'd do with it, rather than worrying *if* they'll do something with it.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of services which aren't secure (e.g. they put *your* info into the URI, where someone else seems like you if they use the same URI). That's not the sort of thing you want ending up being indexed by a search engine. And it's not something that most of the general public would understand.
it would be nice if google/firefox actually would spell all of this out, as well as make the default "off", but it's easier for them to have the user have to opt out.
i didn't discover this, untill i was looking at the packets/traffic from my FF browser and got curious about the "google" traffic when i wasn't using google!!
I thought it was pretty obvious what it'd have to do, to work.
I always go through the browser preferences of new installs, and most updates. I found an option about checking websites and it's clear that it'd either have to come with black/white lists (not practical), or ask some service for its thoughts on what you were about to access.