IE8 beta installs with search bar ‘keylogger’

September 11, 2008 – 5:47 AM

Microsoft’s IE8 browser includes a keystroke-logging search suggestion tool similar to the one that Google modified on Monday after coming under fire from consumers.

Unlike Chrome, IE8 Beta 2 does not enable the feature – which some have compared to a keylogger – by default. One privacy expert said that was a “huge difference.”

According to IE8’s revised privacy statement, Microsoft’s beta browser contains a new feature, dubbed “Suggested Sites,” that sends the addresses of visited sites and other information to the company’s servers.

Suggested Sites is similar to the “Google Suggest” tool in Google’s Chrome browser, and is designed to recommend the most likely destination sites based on what the user types, the popularity of sites and Microsoft’s own algorithm.

On Monday, Google reacted to criticism of the feature by promising it would render the data it collects anonymous within 24 hours.

By comparison, Microsoft’s privacy statement does not spell out how long the Suggest Sites data is kept, and when, if at all, the company “anonymises” that data.

The company does, however, go into some detail about what it collects. “When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with some standard information from your computer such as IP address, browser type, regional and language settings,” the privacy statement reads. Other data that Search Sites collects includes the time that sites were visited, which site referred the user to the destination site and how long the user was at the destination site.

Source:
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=104271