News: Netscape Navigator Browser Snoops On Web Searches

Ah yes, the infamous invasion of privacy. But this time they (Netscape and AOL) are watching what you do on Google! I'm going to take this opportunity to say, everyone, get Opera 6!

http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175035.html

Quote:

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AOL Time Warner's [NTSE:AOL] Netscape unit is snooping on searches performed by users of its latest Navigator browser at Google and other search sites.

According to a network traffic analysis performed by Newsbytes, Netscape is capturing Navigator 6 users' search terms, along with their Internet protocol (IP) address, the date Navigator was installed and a unique identification number.

Anytime a Navigator user performs a search by typing terms into the browser's URL bar and pressing the adjacent Search button, or by using the Search tab on the browser's My Sidebar feature, the user data is sent to a server at info.netscape.com using a uniform resource locator (URL) forwarding system.

While search sites such as Google log data about visitors, Netscape is in a unique position to compile a meta-database of search information, according to Marc Maiffret, "chief hacking officer" for Eeye Digital Security.

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Unbelievable......


What benefit could be derived from logging peoples IP along with their search criteria?

guess it could be to find what ppl are interested in. i think of this as invasion of privacy. i don't think they'll send this information to a bunch of sites to send us a crap load of spam mail, well, i hope they don't!!. i got Netscape 6, but i only use Netscape 6 to access my accounts b/c it is the only browser i have that can support 128 bit encryption.

The internet is now become "individual". The businesses like AOL and others want to "customize everthing for each's interests and benifit". The result is large bundles of information collected in databases for their own interests but labeled as "benifit of all". It's a bunch of crap, we can determine what we want and dont want, we dont need their *understanding of us* to determine what we want... we can choose! They try to influence our freedom of choice by saying "this is what you like... dont grow, dont look for new things, continue with what we offer". Making it easily accessible makes the work less and for those of lesser motivation for searching.. they conform to the wishes of the busniess because "it's what I'm told I want" and it's easy to get to.


basterds

Agrees with Conf1rm3d_k1ll,
Unbelievable. . .
Seems like instead of referring to m$ as being crap we can now refer netscape and aol as crap too.

btw.. Opera 6.01 is already out.. and works better coz it has a better Java Plugin.. ;)

Why get Opera or any other browser that doesn´t do everything, get Mozilla for free, it´s the same as Netscape only the open source version and they bring out a new version regularly.
They have it for many OS´s as well.