News Browzar accused of being adware

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/09/04/Browzar_accussed_of_being_adware/

 

The name alone made me stay clear, they might well have just called it 'Teh BroWzAr'...

 

Teh (3)1337 H4X0R Bro\/\/Z4r [that took me ages to type] would be more appropriate

But yeah, too obvious...

 

Yeah the name was rubbish and looks like the product is rubbish to, I know, Firefox allows some degree of privacy and there is a market for privacy in a world where the MPAA and RIAA can see what you've downloaded illegally and nab you for it..
The market for privacy is still open and perhaps they'll be more products like this, but of course, if they are all like this, then there's no point, is there...
I just want to know what the next privacy browser app is called... how about 133t<bROwSEr OMG!>? I like it...

 

another "browzar" for the trash bin.

 

Its a pity you cant sue the developers for releasing crap like this.

 

it sounds like something out of starwars, made by a college student.

 

that thing actually looks like it was designed by a 10y/o

who the hell would even bother downloading it unless your a serial masterbater

 

It will take something a lot more than a supposed 'no traces' browser to keep the MPAA and RIAA off your back - for starters, generally when you download something illegally, you will store it somewhere, so that kind of negates the whole idea of leaving no traces on your machine. And that's even if this thing worked properly. The idea, patently, is to allow someone to look at...ahem...shall we say 'seedy' websites without being caught out by his wife / girlfriend / flatmate / kids looking at the internet history / temp internet files / IE dropdown / cookies list etc. Getting rid of those tracks is trivial stuff to you and me, but to Joe Average, maybe something like this is a good way for him to get his prawn fix without fear of being caught out.

Of course it is just a shell for IE - it downloads in about 300KB or something - it obviously wasn't going to be a fully fledged browser. And lots of sites require cookies to work. I'm guessing Browzar must have some success in isolating the pages visited / form entries from IE's history, cache and autocomplete, otherwise it really would be totally pointless.

If you want to steer clear of the MPAA and RIAA, you need to use something like an anonymising encrypted proxy (e.g. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/08/15/Swedish_politicians_offer_untraceable_internet/) or at the very least block RIAA / MPAA IP addresses using PeerGuardian.

 

glad you posted this up as you posted on the browzar thread linking to that blog

good thing i never used it

And apart from that, you can actually change all the thing in IE to be more secure then browzar anyway, and you don't need an extra shell for IE

 

If they're in America, and do any sort of damages, you most definitely can. And probably can even if they did nothing more than annoy you.

 

And then the RIAA / MPAA get a court order to read your ISP logs, and all your "countermeasures" were in vein...

 

(1) If you are using an encrypted channel to a proxy, your ISP will have nothing of use to the RIAA / MPAA.
(2) They will only request your logs from the ISP if they have a suspicion that you are file sharing, and the way PeerGuardian works is by blocking their IP addresses, so you are 'invisible' to the RIAA etc.
(3) They will only get a court order if they can demonstrate some reasonable grounds why they think it will lead to a conviction - see (2).
(4) Any protection is better than none, and will reduce further the already slim chance of being caught.
(5) That's assuming your ISP actually keeps logs of every site you visit. They don't have to do so, and probably don't, at least not for long - it would generate an enormous amount of generally useless data.

However, you are correct insofar as the only way to be completely safe is not to do anything wrong in the first place, although it is still possible the RIAA (never ones to let the facts stand in the way of a good law suit) will file suit against you even if you don't have a PC.

 

http://torpark.nfshost.com/

Now your safe.

 

What's wrong with just setting Firefox to 'Clear Private Data' on exit?

Or just manually delete all files yourself? I don't get why people need a 'privacy' browser at all tbh, especially one called Browzar, ugh.