Google Safe Browsing Feature Could Compromise Privacy

Researcher RSnake has discovered that Google's anti-malware and anti-phishing features for Chrome and Firefox tracks information about user's browsing habits

Google basically stores a cookie on the user's computer that can be used to track him or her, he says. And the cookie can be used to identify the IP addresses he or she visits, for instance. Hansen says Google logs that data for anti-distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) purposes.

"In Chrome, every five hours it phones home" to check for the current version and"sends a payload including machine ID and user ID," says RSnake.

The only way to protect your privacy from this, he says, is to turn off the anti-phishing and anti-malware options. "The bummer is you're turning off a great service," he says. "It protects you from malware" and other threats, he says.

The good news, he says, is that Google only retains the data for two weeks, and then stores it in aggregate form. "But having this IP address, this cookie, and this timestamp is enough information to decloak someone for a [hacking] incident they did two years ago," he says. "So if you use Firefox or Chrome, you should know the risks" of the Safe Browsing feature, he says.

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