new web browser

a new web browser has been launched which promises anonymous surfing by deleting all searches made and pages visted.

i can see this browser will be very popular to start with but it will surely end up being banned just because it could probably be used by terrorists and paedophiles or at least that will be the official excuse anyway.

info here on the browser 'browzar'

I think you have misunderstood the term privacy.

The browser only hides searchs and web pages visited from other users of the same computer, this can already be done on IE.

This doesnt stop the police tracing paedophiles or terrorists as they are traced through their IP address.

yes, i am aware of that, but tracing an ip to say, an internet cafe, will not really prove WHAT they were looking at (unless they were visiting a set-up site, as in the case of some child pornography sites).

Originally posted by justyc
yes, i am aware of that, but tracing an ip to say, an internet cafe, will not really prove WHAT they were looking at (unless they were visiting a set-up site, as in the case of some child pornography sites).

Why would their IP be traced if they hadnt already visited a site on some sort of list ie. they already know what they had been looking at.

Also how many people look at child porn or arrange terrorist attacks in internet cafes?

well, lets take the case of some of those people arrested in the uk recently in the plane plot scare.

apparantly a memory stick was found on one of them which shows he had been looking up flight times from the uk to the us. unless all airline searches are being monitored for ip, no-one would have known about this if it wasnt for the memory stick. they could have searched the home pc or internet cafe used, but if this browser was in place then they wouldnt have known about the searches made. see what im getting at?

i would imagine most terrorist activities are probably based on internet cafe rather than home pc as they offer better anonymity because you can walk in off the street and then disappear there afterwards

Originally posted by justyc
apparantly a memory stick was found on one of them which shows he had been looking up flight times from the uk to the us. unless all airline searches are being monitored for ip, no-one would have known about this if it wasnt for the memory stick. they could have searched the home pc or internet cafe used, but if this browser was in place then they wouldnt have known about the searches made. see what im getting at?

kind of, but are you suggesting that all airline searchs should be monitored? Thats not illegal and its not even evidence of any wrong doing.

The only new service this browser offers is that it does things which IE can already do but automatically. Anyone planning a terrorist attack can cover his tracks without this browser so it doesnt really make that much difference.

[edit on 1/9/06 by gfad]

The minimum requirements for Browzar are: Windows 98 Second Edition (SE): and Internet Explorer (IE) 5.5.

Browzar only ever stores cookies temporarily, automatically deleting them when you close the programme. For many sites, such as internet banking or shopping sites, it is necessary to store cookies to keep you logged into the site or hold shopping cart contents while you perform your transactions.

quoted from www.browzar.com...

This is just a frontend for Internet Explorer and will therefore be vunerable to everything Internet Explorer is. I don't see anything special about it, other browsers can be set to wipe private data on exit and have done for a long time.

And if a government or other authority is tracking what you do it wont be from your own PC anyways the data will be intercepted elsewhere most likely your ISP.

You can already do this with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and pretty much every web browser that exists. Hell, Firefox asks me if I want to clear out my history, cookies, cache, and temporary files every time I close this.

This is all stored locally on YOUR computer, so you could delete it even without going through the web browser.