On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: >> Not so scary if you're installed the application yourself, and you >> trust >> them... Do you trust google? :) > > It's certainly getting to be less and less. > > Since they're detecting things like Adobe, Picasa, Google Earth, Skype, > RealPlayer, Google Desktop ... > Some of which, I know, have browser plugins (which I habitually disable) ... > and some of which have no browser plugins... > > Since they're detecting some things that have no browser plugin, it stands > to reason, they're making a call to a client-side application that I must > have installed with some previous installer (such as Chrome, Picasa, or > Google Earth.) It just doesn't feel right, makes my skin crawl to know > they're habitually and without asking, checking to see what I've got in my > computer. They could look for anything they want, get any information they > want, out of me, with or without letting me know they got it.
two things here. 1. remember that browsers get helper apps configured, not all of these run inside the browser. if your browser has a helper app for these things configured, it stands to reason that you have them installed, and the existance of these helper configs is testable by javascript in the page. 2. if you are worried about what they _could_ do, don't install any binary app from them. that app could be programmed to do anything to your system > Well ... Maybe they did ask, in one of the 40-page long EULA's that I > accepted in some previous application install. > > It's not much of a stretch to start calling this spyware. it's only spyware if they are sending the information back to servers somewhere. David Lang _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
