SRWare Iron - Chromium Based Web Browser Which "Respects" Your Privacy

Now, even though Chrome is the front runner as the "Google" web browser, it's actually the Chromium which Chrome is based on. Since Google now owns Chromium, every time Chromium developers come with a new version, the big G just take that and change few things (like icons, etc) and release it as Chrome!.

From the beginning Google was criticized by the expert for its "unnecessary" behavior. Not just its web browser actually, there was an interesting article on gawker today saying that Google even spies on us using our E-mail account!.

Anyhow, as I was saying, whenever you type a URL in your Chrome browser, to "help" the user for a better search experience Chrome actually sent your URL (which will "reveal" your sites, etc to G!) to one of their official servers, without anyone knowing it!.

The "honest" Iron browser logo ...

This is actually a behavior of a malicious software (developed by lord Vader :P) known as Key-logger. What a Key-logger does is, it spies on you by running on your OS background and every time you copy, enter text, etc... it just store them in it own database then it send that information to it master!. As you can see what Chrome does is almost exactly the same.

Not just that, notorious Chrome actually even goes further. Not just URLs, say that you use Yahoo or Bing for searching, then Chrome will remember those "text phrases" and sent them to its master the big G as well. These results were first test by this Italian blog post, if you have time and really concerned about your privacy, seriously read it!.

So you basically have two main "options.

1. You can say bye bye to Chrome and go for the cool Firefox4 or...

2. If you still want all those features offered by Chrome/Chromium (it's actually pretty impressive piece of software ;) ), then you can use the Iron Browser!.

Since Chromium is an open-source project, anyone can (although may not be as freely as GNU software) take the code and create something of their own.

That's exactly what the Iron browser does. Although I haven't tested it (I really don't need Chrome... I love FF4 :P) but according to experts, Iron browser has removed all those notorious codes from the Chromium/Chrome thus when using it, you don't have to worry about those above mentioned privacy issues.

Since it's based on Chromium... it offers all the cool features that Chrome/Chrome offers as well. So basically you have an exact replica of Chrome without all those naughty features :P. It's a win win situation for all.

How can I use it in Ubuntu/Debian?

Easy actually. Just download the .deb package from here and double click on it and follow the instructions on the screen. It's also available for MS Windows and Mac OSX as well. Get them from here. Recently they update to the latest version of Chrome which is now 11. Enjoy your newly owned privacy boys and gals ;).