Chrome – Security Risk?

So in the last day or so a few things have come to my attention. It seems Chrome has some issues and their name is Google. In the past Google has often been accused of serious privacy violations. Many of those were completely unfounded, the ones that had some basis were generally not a result of Google doing something but concerns about the type of information Google stores. Chrome is a victim of both Google policy and gathering far too much information. That second one doesn’t sound so bad right?

Too much information doesn’t seem like it could be a bad thing, until you realize that it’s conceivable that a hacker might be able to get at that information. Your entire search history, including secure sites, is what Chrome indexes. Go ahead, go to your banks website, log in and check your balance. Now type balance into your search bar and click on the “recent pages in history” link. On the resulting page you’ll probably see some of your account information right there. That information is stored on your harddrive, in files it’s conceivable a hacker could get to. While it’s not a specific security hole, we all know someone will eventually find an actual security hole in Chrome. In fact two have already been found, neither really all that bad, but it shows security holes are everywhere. These security holes are nothing new, not even anything to get excited about (similar flaws were found in the first release of Firefox 3). What happens when a real hole is found though? The information Google indexes is stored in an easy to find folder. Should this cause a freak out? Certainly not, but it’s something that should be addressed especially in this day and age. So there is no immediate danger and as I said yesterday, if Google responds to the risks efficiently enough we’ll be ok. The other issue is far more disturbing, at least to me. › Continue reading

Does Chrome Shine?

Okay, not the most original title for an article about Chrome, Google’s new browser, but it’s early and sometimes I’m allowed to be lame. Let me start by saying two of the browsers I’ll talk about in this article are beta browsers. Both IE 8 and Chrome are still in the works and some of my complaints will most likely be addressed before they are “officially” released.

I have IE 8, Flock (a derivative of Firefox) and Chrome installed on my computer. I’ve been running head to head comparisons of the 3 since I downloaded Chrome yesterday and for a week before that I was comparing IE 8 and Flock trying to decide which would be my primary browser. It’s no secret that I’ve not been a Firefox fan, other than a brief flirtation when Firefox 2 came out, I’ve been an IE 7 guy. There are several features I like and Firefox 3 has had a recurring memory leak problem which pops up every couple of updates. So, it’s going to take quite a browser to convince me to change my ways. First let me start with the competition.

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