Chrome personalises anonymous browsing

ALTERNATIVE BROWSER Chrome keeps track of users' habits even when in "anonymous" browsing mode.

Developed by Google using the Webkit rendering engine, Chrome has been steadily gaining browser market share as Microsoft's security liability, Internet Explorer, has seen its popularity wane. However, it seems that Google's lazy attitude about getting its products out of beta has resulted in one key feature not operating as described.

Chrome's "incognito" mode tries to offer those who take part in after hours browsing some sense of privacy. Most mistake the mode as a form of anonymiser, but in reality all it does is not track the users' browsing habits and decline to accept cookies from websites, supposedly not leaving a trace of what websites the user viewed on the computer.

While incognito mode does seem to work as expected on the surface, digging a little deeper, we found that Chrome does in fact remember sites that were visited.

Downloading the latest version of the browser from Google's website, we found that for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, Google served up version 4.1.249.1064, which according to the application's About dialogue box is current. On a Mac running OS X 10.5.8, Google serves up a beta version, 5.0.375.38. It is this beta version that seems to remember browsing preferences, even when viewed in incognito mode.

No immediately visible reminders of previous browsing history are present on either version. However, on the Mac OS X beta version, sites viewed still retain the level of zoom from previous browsing sessions. Alternative browsing enthusiasts will be eager to know what other breadcrumbs they are leaving behind.

Google's Chrome web browser has had a patchy past with regards to privacy. Google attached a unique identifier to every single copy of its Chrome browser, although the firm has said it will remove this in future versions. Then came Microsoft's attempt to undermine the browser by saying that the browser was not "respecting users' privacy".

The comical rant by the Vole's Internet Explorer product manager, Pete LePage, claimed that inputting text into Chrome's address bar sends each keystroke to Google. LePage then lauded his firm's Internet Explorer 8 for its superior privacy, clearly forgetting the years of security problems that the Vole's family of web browsers gave users.

Google will have to get its act together if it really wants to topple its competitors. The competition isn't the Vole's hapless IE team, but rather Mozilla's Firefox, Opera and Apple's Safari. While none have particularly stellar records for security, for Google it is vital that the company is seen to honour users' requests for privacy and security, given the amount of data it has access to.

Google's problem is that it simply cannot expect to serve users beta versions of its software and use that as an excuse for core features not to work as it claims.

Users might wonder what other claims that Google makes aren't actually true. µ