* Maintaining your browsing privacy
People are becoming more concerned about their online privacy and the market opportunities for products that help manage exposure and risk are increasing dramatically. Here’s an example that underlines the need for privacy where your browsing habits are concerned:
“A good friend of mine recently found out his girlfriend was pregnant when auto-complete came up with ‘symptoms of pregnancy’.”
The company citing this embarrassment and/or shock is Browzar and you can find its collection of other cringe-worthy examples on its “Should’ve used Browzar” page.
Browzar’s tag line is “Your private window on the Web” and to do this the software creates its own UI and uses the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser control to access and interpret Web content. Browzar doesn’t maintain any caches, doesn’t keep history, only supports temporary cookies, and doesn’t support auto-complete. In other words, Browzar attempts to ensure that no trace of your browsing activities remains on your PC.
The beauty of Browzar is that being an IE shell it is a very small download. Browzar also doesn’t need to be installed which also makes it very simple to run from a USB drive (or nerd stick as my son calls them) and as the publisher points out, it is an excellent tool when:
* You’re at a friend’s house and you want to check your e-mail.
* You have one family computer at home that everyone shares.
* You need to check your e-mail from an Internet café.
* You’re at work and looking for another job.
* You are at work and need to check your online bank account.
Browzar currently only supports Windows and IE (Mac and Linux versions are planned). The tool is free and the publishers generate revenue from sponsored search results.
So will Browzar make a big impact on consumers? I doubt it – despite the growing awareness of privacy issues consumers are, on the whole, not yet ready to take action (if we can’t get them to secure their wireless access points there isn’t really much hope, is there?). Browzar will probably make it big with more sophisticated users but whether the company can make money with sponsored search links remains to be seen.
Note: Even when you use Browzar your browsing tracks are still visible to the Web sites you visit and most importantly to search engines. Thus, if you are really paranoid, you might want to also use a free “cloaking” system such as Anonymouse. To use this service just append your target URL to Anonymouse’s CGI-based proxy URL like this: http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.networkworld.com
