More privacy in the Chrome web browser

Jon Helgason, 123RF

Constant Outflow

Erik Bärwaldt , Thomas Leichtenstern

Google Chrome constantly "phones home." With a little effort and the appropriate add-ons, however, you can prevent transmitting unwanted data.

Current reports have Google's Chrome web browser outranking the Firefox browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation [1]. Without a doubt, Chrome runs faster, but it also does large-scale eavesdropping on users. Google might provide the majority of the BSD-licensed source code as Chromium, but modifying the Chrome binary data runs afoul of its Terms of Service. The company arms the software with countless services and a search engine. Without modification, Chrome is constantly "phoning home."

This intrusion provides the company with very detailed information about users' habits that it then sells to the advertising industry. Stemming the flood of data from the browser to Google requires careful manual configuration and applying a number of add-ons and extensions.

Overview

The search engine giant published a white paper to expose the various services that contact the browser [2]. Despite the white paper's feel-good intention, the company's data undeniably leads to creating detailed user profiles. All that's needed is to merge the data.

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