#browser choice

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Some important things like app launchers, notification systems, & user profiles don’t add much if you’re running a web browser on Windows, Mac or Linux – all of those operating systems have their own, native, better-integrated tools for doing an exact same thing, albeit usually the very way the OS designer actually intended.

Chrome for example, has it’s own notification system, which makes sense within itself, but not on every other platform. These notifications look out of place & overlap with notifications from other programs, they nearly always add complication, not to mention extra lines of code to what previously was intended as a streamlined & efficient designed OS.

For these reasons, & pending anniversary update features, we recommend use of the first party browsing experience within Windows 10 by using Microsoft Edge.

Internet Explorer (IE) users will now be automatically updated to the latest version of the browser. Microsoft said it was starting the project to update millions of machines to improve security online.

Future updates to the browser would be applied without a user's knowledge to help beat scammers catching people out with fake updates & malware. Those who did not want their browser updated could opt out or uninstall the software, said Microsoft.

Since a third party browser choice option within windows became mandatory, many users have followed through to install alternative browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari. But users may be completely unaware that just because they may opt to use a different browser, it does not mean that IE should escape necessary updates to keep their system ultimately as secure as possible.

It would appear however, that completely uninstalling IE may still not be a viable option. If only 'opting out' of its updates instead of 'opting in' becomes a change, then users PC's may still remain vulnerable with an 'open back door' if their outdated IE product lurks behind the scenes of a systems bloat.

A new study of browser security by security research firm Accuvant Labs crowned Chrome the champion of security features, & ranked Firefox below Internet Explorer in terms of protection available from web-borne threats.

Predictably, Microsoft and Mozilla have different opinions on what makes a browser secure, and why Accuvant's findings are off base. Lets not forget the study was funded by Google in the first place. It's also interesting that a similar independent study only four months previous claimed that IE9's built in protection leads.

So which browser is the most secure, & do the security features listed in studies like this even matter to the rest of us?

IE10 is now available for Windows 7 & integrated with Windows 8.

Microsoft released IE10 shortly before or at the same time it released to manufacturing Windows 8, mid-2012.

Learn more.. http://m.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-delivers-new-ie-10-preview-for-wi...

Internet users will receive a warning if sites do not respect their privacy thanks to new tools being developed by the web's standards setting body. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wants to help users control how their personal data is managed. It is designing controls to shield personal data and reveal when sites do not honour privacy requests.

The W3C now wants users, browser makers & businesses to help finish and implement the specifications. "Users have the feeling they are being tracked and some users have privacy concerns and would like to solve them," said Dr Matthias Schunter from IBM who chairs the W3C group drawing up the Do Not Track technologies.

The working group is defining software specifications that will:

let browser settings tell websites to do less tracking

let websites acknowledge privacy requests

define best practices for sites so they can comply with different privacy needs

Dr Schunter said the specifications aim to end the current situation in which different browser makers adopt incompatible 'Do Not Track' systems. "Currently websites need to implement all these different protocols," he said. "There's no standard way to respect privacy preferences." "We want to standardise all these protocols so they talk the same language and then tell websites what to do with them."

The tools resulting from the W3C work would aim to be "privacy friendly" and surrender as little information as possible, he added. For instance, he said, a site could log a user's language preference by noting their name and native tongue & store that in a cookie - little text files sites use to record information about regular visitors. A more privacy-friendly way, said Dr Schunter, would have browser software note that its owner prefers a particular language without surrendering any identifying information. Users could be warned about sites that do not do a good job of respecting requests to keep information private.

While the W3C cannot insist that sites and software vendors follow its lead, it was more than likely that they would adopt the technologies. The finished technologies are expected to be implemented by browser makers first in mid-2012 with websites following soon after as they get to grips with the best practices. More than 15 firms and organisations are involved in the 'Do Not Track' work including Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford University.

via bbc.co.uk

Recent EU Privacy law regulation changes to the Privacy & Electronics Communications directive now force websites to ask for "explicit consent" from consumers before storing cookies.