Released: October 27, 2006

Firefox/Google anti-fraud effort a privacy threat?

Source: By Martin H. Bosworth, Consumeraffairs.com

Fans of open-source foundation Mozilla’s popular Firefox Web browser had reason to rejoice on Oct. 24, as the company released version 2.0 of the free software to highly positive reviews.

But a new feature designed to protect Web surfers from “phishing” attacks raised a few eyebrows, as it could potentially deliver a user’s records of all visited sites to any participating anti-phish site tracker.

More interestingly, the only participating partner at the moment is Google, itself often discussed as having a spotty attitude toward keeping users’ data private.

“Phishing” is a form of fraud wherein Web surfers visit a site that looks like a reputable business site - Amazon.com or Bank of America, for example - but is in fact designed to collect your financial information.

Phishers not only create dummy Web pages to siphon victims’ data, but can also clog up your e-mail inbox with junk requests to provide your personal information.

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