Well, it is all about data nowadays… Does everyone want to be open book to corporations, governments (and all the employees that work there and has access to these data)? With the power to do legal things and illegal things just because they can?

For people believing “nothing to fear, nothing to hide, so why not” I have an upgrade plan: Why not put a camera in your bedroom? Do you fear of something??

FUD sites… come on… Someone with a computer and electronic money should have some brain…

Even then of course sh*t happens and protection is nice. But why this software checks every site @ real time for FUD? Why not download a FUD sites database once a day and do the search locally with no data transferred back to google?

Why to fear google until it proves itself as an evildoer? Why not? Lets buy a crocodile, if it eats our children we will then be careful…

…so I managed to translate FUD as fraud… in my reply. So for all of you speaking english better than me, my reply may not make sense! Please replace FUD with FRAUD while reading it :p

Hi Kawa,
Thanks for your comments.
Ron

“pure J E A L O U S Y!”

What you wrote there is pure R U B B I S H, Ron.

I don’t hate Google, I use it all the time. I’m not jealous of Google either, or its founders. They’ve done very well and I’m happy for them.

The issue is quite simply: I do not want Google - or ANYONE ELSE for that matter - to know the ins and outs of my surfing habits. They have probably already amassed a fair amount of data about me. I don’t want them amassing any more. It’s called privacy, and we all have a right to that.

In any case, the Firefox feature you’re talking about can be switched off; in fact it comes disabled by default. So if you want to use it, go ahead and turn it on, but you don’t have to spew all over those who don’t want to.

Hi Jamie N.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I also believe in privacy. As you stated the feature is turned off by default. My point is what is the problem than? It is not like Google is forcing anyone to use it.

Ron

Kawa,

FUD doesn’t mean fraud, it stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

I believe that was originally applied to the Microsoft strategy of sewing FUD among its opponents.

[...] Firefox Uses Google To Check Forged Web Sites [...]

Seems like the entire discussion got started by somebody not understanding the technical implementation of the system.

True:
- Firefox uses a google database of “bad” sites”
- When you get to a site that is on that “bad” list, you get a big warning message.

False:
- Google knows what sites you visit.

How does it work?
- The firefox client downloads the free google database of “hashes” of URLs and domain names.
- Every time that you visit a site, its name is hashed, and looked up against that database. If it is on there, you get the warning.

Why does it work like that?
- To prevent fraud : You cannot reverse the database to find a list of fraudster sites.
- For performance reasons : Instead of needing to do an extra call to an other server (google or otherwise), the browser does a calculation and a lookup in a local database. This is many orders of magnitude faster. And less stress on the servers.

How to verify?
- Read the Google online API.
- Run Wireshark when you browse. You will be able to see each and every packet entering and leaving your system.

The proof is in the pudding.