19 September 2008, 11:06

Google Chrome update stops remembering your secrets

An update to Google Chrome, Beta 0.2.149.30, was released on September 17th. Although only one low risk security fix is listed, other changes made have fixed major holes in the privacy of Chrome users.

Previous versions of Chrome indexed the content of https: sites in the local history, which had allowed users to locally retrieve information like bank and credit card information. The new release stops indexing of these SSL-secured sites. Another change in the new release sees Chrome being more sensible about which URLs are sent to the Google Suggest service. Now, URLs which contain sensitive information will not be sent to Google Suggest. This includes URLs which include a user name and password such as http://username:password@example.com/, URLs with query parameters and any https: URL with path information following the host name.

Google suggests that users worried about any data Chrome may have already indexed should refer to its instructions for clearing the browser's history. Users should expect their installations of Google Chrome to update to the new version in the next few days, according to Google.

(djwm)

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