Privacy concerns with Netscape's Smart Browsing...

[Tim Tripp]

Greetings, Gentlefolk,

One of the engineers at my company has relayed an interesting tidbit of
information on how Netscape's "Smart Browsing" feature really works.  It
sounds like this could have serious potential implications for privacy and
intellectual property issues.

Not having the necessary technical savvy to really evaluate the seriousness of
this threat, I'm wondering if anyone out there could offer opinions on the
concerns raised at:
http://www.interhack.net/pubs/whatsrelated/

Here's a brief excerpt from their page:

-----------
Netscape Communications Corporation's release of Communicator 4.06 contains a
new feature, ``Smart Browsing'', controlled by a new icon labeled What's
Related , a front-end to a service that will recommend sites that are related
to the document the user is currently viewing. The implementation of this
feature raises a number of potentially serious privacy concerns, which we have
examined here. 

Specifically, URLs that are visited while a user browses the web are reported
back to a server at Netscape. The logs of this data, when used in conjunction
with cookies, could be used to build extensive dossiers of individual web
users, even including their names, addresses, and telephone numbers in some
cases. 
-----------

As this issue has been raised with our Company Security Officer, I need to
take it seriously.  Any thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Tim

-- 
Tim Tripp, Librarian                           
Spar Aerospace Ltd.                          
9445 Airport Road
Brampton, Ontario, Canada
L6S 4J3
http://www.spar.ca/
Tel:(905) 790-2800 ext. 4108
Fax:(905) 790-4423 
Work: ttripp at spar.ca 
Home: ttripp at inforamp.net
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