Google Chrome Spinoff 'Iron' For Privacy Fanatics 165
Sonnet_XVIII writes "According to DownloadSquad,
A German company SRWare has developed a Google Chrome Spin off called Iron aimed at people who are concerned or have questions about Google's policies for collecting usage data."
Translation (Score:5, Informative)
I only speak a little German. So here is a bery bad translation via babelfish:
Language (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fanatical (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Removing Unique User ID (Score:3, Informative)
Judging by the comparative table on the SRWare page, it does indeed.
Translated FAQ (Score:3, Informative)
What is Iron?
Iron is an Internet Browser, like Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera. It is based off of the free online source code of "Chromium".
I read that there are tools which attempt to make Chrome anonymous. Why shouldn't I simply use these?
There are worthwhile Freeware tools which offer similar functionality. However, these do not work from source and offer only limited control. Functions like the URL tracker cannot be switched off. This only offers variable security.
Iron is free -- how do you finance it?
In order to keep Iron financed, we place an advertisement on the front page. We also ask for donations if you like the product -- it would make us happy.
How can one be sure that Iron doesn't inadvertantly send data?
This is a concern. We log all incoming and outgoing packets and did not detect any precarious activity. You can also test this yourself.
PS: The harmless (DNS Vorabruf?) has been disabled based on standard, since it can possibly be abused by Spammern.
Do you offer uncompiled source code for Chromium?
This would be useless, because Chromium Builds likewise contain the offending source code. We only offer the modified Iron.
Re:Their promises are as good as their source (Score:5, Informative)
The source code is available.
The differences (Score:5, Informative)
* unlike the current Chrome beta it uses the newest Webkit version of the current Chromium build
* it does not generate a unique ID of every client for use by Google
* no installation timestamp ill be generated for google
* no "suggest feature" that phones home to google (for help) what you type into the address bar
* will not phone home to google in case you mistyped a URL
* no phoning home for error reporting
* does not send RLZ tracking info to google, e.g. about when and where Chrome was downloaded
* NO frickin updater that installs itself as a startup app to run in the background
* does not load google homepage in background when the browser is loaded
Of course they provide the source code for your own tinkering as well, just don't hammer the poor fellas (more than they already get hammered right now ;)) as according to their page their current revenue only comes from the ads on the page and hopefully some donations by people showing their appreciation of their work.
Re:Their promises are as good as their source (Score:3, Informative)
Um, isn't the source code also downloadable from their site?
http://www.srware.net/software_srware_iron_download.php [srware.net]
Look at the bottom - the source is available in 4 parts, it seems.
Editors? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The differences (Score:3, Informative)
Re:IRC log from Iron (Score:1, Informative)
http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/
There has been several releases.
Re:Editors? (Score:2, Informative)