Feb. 14th, 2012
Another Glorious DNW From Google
Feb. 14th, 2012 06:55 pmFrom Ars Technica:
No thankyou. Time to go back to Safari on the Mac, methinks; I'm already using FF on the PC.
(Crossposted to my other journal, apologies if you see it twice.)
Google has also added some new security functionality to Chrome. Every time that the user downloads a file, the browser will compare it against a whiltelist of known-good files and publishers. If the file isn't in the whitelist, its URL will be transmitted to Google's servers, which will perform an automatic analysis and attempt to guess if the file is malicious based on various factors like the trustworthiness of its source. If the file is deemed a potential risk, the user will receive a warning.
Google says that data collected by the browser for the malware detection feature is only used to flag malicious files and isn't used for any other purpose. The company will retain the IP address of the user and other metadata for a period of two weeks, at which point all of the data except the URL of the file will be purged from Google's databases.
No thankyou. Time to go back to Safari on the Mac, methinks; I'm already using FF on the PC.
(Crossposted to my other journal, apologies if you see it twice.)