Tag Archives: Incognito mode
thechromesource Daily: Links for 8/9/10
Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
0 Comments
Facebook is in “lockdown” mode for the next sixty days while Google is expected to release their social product during that span.
The Notion Ink Adam is supposed to be a tablet released with Chrome OS at some point; here is a look at its ongoing development.
If you’re using the Chrome webapps already here is a tip on how to restore the address bar in one of those tabs, courtesy of Lifehacker.
While we’ve got our reservations about Incognito Mode, DownloadSquad has discovered an interesting extension for it.
Files that have already been uploaded to Google Docs can now be converted into various file types.
Reviewing the “Privacy Mode” Browser Debate
Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
ArsTechnica has an excellent article discussing a Stanford research project that was conducted regarding browser “privacy” modes. In Chrome, this is called Incognito mode. For Firefox, it is called Private Browsing. In Internet Explorer it’s called InPrivate. Despite the label for it, this method of using the web is a bit misleading by claiming it offers protections against companies mining data from browsing.
We’ve got to step back and look at this from a different perspective here: when we are browsing the internet, we’re leaking data about ourselves all over the place. The web is a two way street: from the moment you start using it you are inputting data about yourself. You open a browser – regardless of the mode – and you start searching, logging in to services and clicking on links.
A major problem also appears to be add-ons and extensions in the browser, since they are capable of saving data themselves. I had previously talked about Google being very careful to look over extensions before adding them to the Official Extensions site, but perhaps they are only concerned about extensions that have potential elevation privileges that can attack a PC.
So perhaps in all of this internet business we have lost an element of privacy. There is still some degree of anonymity, but it may not last much longer. Some believe we should get rid of all anonymous use of the internet in order to legitimize it – but can that really be done?
Chrome 5 – Bigger, Badder and Faster
Posted on 05. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
No doubt that it has been big news about all of the new features included in the new release of Chrome 5, which is a beta yet should be going stable quite soon. Some of the biggest features include integrated Flash, a revamped V8 JavaScript engine and geolocation. Also: an overhauled HTML based bookmarks manager, an extension-capable Incognito Mode and the ability (finally) to organize your extensions the way you want them.
Let’s also not forget the fact that although Chrome has been known for its speed, this element has been amped up even more for the newest realease. Look at how much faster Chrome has gotten since its inception in 2008.
With all of the new elements in Chrome browser, one has to start to wonder what Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple will do with their respective browsers. Quite frankly, I’m not sure that these other companies are going to be able to keep up with all that Google is doing to build the best browser available, especially since it is available for all of the major operating systems. This coupled with the fact that Chrome also has its own open source community, Chromium, certainly lends itself even more credit.
Let’s also not forget slick marketing. The ads that have been released touting Chrome are thoughtful and very original. Who else is trying to sell you their browser technology this way, or even at all?
What Does Your Browser Say About You? Find Out With BrowserSpy
Posted on 13. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
Your browser is very telling. And I don’t mean just what type of browser you use, but also your screen resolution, what version of Adobe Reader you have installed, whether you have Java installed and if so what version, what CPU you are running and CSS information that can show what sites you usually frequent:
All thanks to BrowserSpy. With this little website you can see just how much of you PC’s information is leaking all over the internet like a water balloon with a slight tear in it. Many people don’t realize this, and that’s why BrowserSpy’s founder, Henrik Gemal, set out to start a site that offers this information to the world. He keeps it updated, and keeps adding things that he finds which you may not know is available just by surfing the web.
Concerned about your privacy on the web? Chrome has options that allow you to turn off JavaScript, go into what’s know as Incognito Mode and there are also variations of Chromium open source builds that are built with privacy in mind. When I went to the BrowserSpy site with one of such browsers, known as Comodo Dragon, a few things were left undetected as I went through the list of tests on the left hand site of the site – but not everything.
At the same time, using Chrome with no privacy settings turned on, BrowserSpy pinpointed my IP address to somewhere north of Wichita Kansas on a Google Map. Which is highly incorrect. Maybe they don’t know that much about me.
Firefox Lorentz Emulates Chrome’s Stability Features
Posted on 09. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
ReadWriteWeb is reporting that the beta of Firefox 3.6.3, dubbed Lorentz, is testing a new feature in the browser where plugins are isolated by tab in the event that it crashes. This allows for a singular unstable tab to crash instead of the whole browser. This may sound familiar to those who use Chrome, and will be a new feature in a future stable release of Firefox.
What’s funny is that rival browsers are making no bones about taking Google’s browser ideas and turning them into their own. Microsoft’s IE8 InPrivate, which is the same thing as Chrome’s Incognito mode, comes to mind. Witness the crash screen in Lorentz compared to Chrome’s:
Heading down this path is great for browsers overall, but it seems funny at times when you see competing browsers copying Chrome’s functions in order to keep up with its frenetic pace of development. Indeed, Chrome has quickly gone from version 1.0 in 2008 to 4.0 stable a few months ago.
One of the reasons for early adoption has been Google’s decision to auto-update Chrome. While initially this was heavily criticized, you can see here how fast Chrome has migrated to newer versions because of this functionality:
While Firefox also pushes updates, users are prompted to install them. This may be less obtrusive in terms of privacy than Chrome, and still allows for a regular schedule of updates to the browser:
Microsoft does not prompt for IE updates leaving some users still stuck on IE6, although that metric is slowly changing:
You can try out the new Firefox Lorentz by downloading it from here. Lorentz only isolates QuickTime, Flash, and Silverlight as their own processes. You can, however, customize it to do so for other plugins such as Adobe Reader through these instructions.
Microsoft Takes Issue With Chrome Feature That Can be Turned Off
Posted on 01. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
In a video that is meant to show off the security features of Internet Explorer 8, Product Manager Pete LePage takes aim at the Chrome browser, claiming that because IE8 allows users to search in a separate box rather than doing so in an all-in-one inbox box that Google is possibly compromising a user’s security by reporting every term back to Google.
“By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you’re visiting aren’t automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else,” LePage says in the video.
“As I start to type an address into the address bar, Fiddler [a Web debugging proxy] shows that for nearly every character I type, Chrome sends a request back to Google,” LePage says. “I haven’t even hit enter yet to load the website and Google is already getting information about the domain and sites I’m visiting.”
This only partially true. You are capable of changing your search provider in Chrome, and when you do the information that you search for in the Omnibox will send it back to the engine of your choosing. Just because IE8 has two separate boxes for these functions does not make it safer.
The option for sending information back to Google when you start typing into the Omnibox can be turned off by following these instructions. I know this because I downloaded Fiddler myself and tried it to make sure.
LePage also goes on to promote the virtues of IE8′s InPrivate feature, which allows users to surf the web anonymously. Interestingly, this feature sounds eerily similar to Chrome’s Incognito mode which has been a part of Google’s browser since 2008.
Look, there’s no doubt here that Internet Explorer is facing a decline in market share. A recent graph out by Net Applications shows that Internet Explorer is dropping while Chrome is gaining. At the same time, competitors like Safari (which can be traced to Mac adoption), Firefox and Opera are filling in the space where users once had Internet Explorer as their preferred browser. If Microsoft does not go on the offensive with videos like this they risk losing even more market share.
Expect Microsoft to heavily market IE8 and eventually IE9. They will also do well if they keep copying key elements of other popular browsers if they hope to stay relevant, one of the other “industry standard” practices LePage talks about in the video.
