Privacy Concerns Over Chrome Omnibox

By DT Staff Published October 25, 2009

Privacy Concerns Over Chrome Omnibox — Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you’re very definite on the issue of privacy, you’ll want to make a few tweaks if you’re a Chrome user.

Currently, according to TechNewsWorld, everything you type in the location bar – be it a URL or search query – could be logged, along with your IP address, by Google. You don’t even have to hit enter.

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However, currently only around 2% of that data is being collected, the company insists.

Google spokesperson Carolyn Penner told the news service:

"If Google is set as [the] default search engine, any entry into the Google Chrome Omnibox that returns search results after hitting enter is considered a search query by the browser, sent to Google, and … stored in our search logs. However, most entries of URLs into the Omnibox will be recognized by the browser as URLs and will return a Web page with that URL. In that case, nothing is stored."

However, there are solutions. You can enjoy browsing without passing on information by turning on the Incognito feature sported by Chrome, or turning off the “suggest” feature. And if you want to eliminate data collection that’s specific to Omnibox search queries, you can simply change the default search engine.

The question there, of course, is what’s the alternative?

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