Google Web Accelerator sparks privacy fears

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Since i never posted about the application itself last night, heres a briefing on what GWA exactly is: [quote]Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google's global computer network to make web pages load faster. Google Web Accelerator is easy to use; all you have to do is download and install it, and from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before.

Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:

    * Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
    * Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
    * Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
    * Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
    * Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
    * Compressing data before sending it to your computer.


Please note that Google Web Accelerator is currently in beta test mode. If you have any problems using it or have suggestions for how we can improve it, please see the Google Group devoted to it.

Also note that during the first part of our beta testing period, users outside of North America and Europe may not see much improvement in their web page loading speed.[/quote]

Early users of Google's Web Accelerator tool are fretting that they could disclose more than they bargained for

A software tool launched by Google on Wednesday that speeds up the process of downloading Web sites has caused some users to worry about their privacy.

Google Web Accelerator, which was released in beta, is set up to automatically work with Firefox and Internet Explorer once it's been downloaded. The service stores copies of sites frequently accessed by individual PCs and automatically retrieves new data from those pages, so that a Web browser needs to process only updates to those sites when asked to load them. It can also automatically "pre-fetch" frequently used Web sites before the user downloads it.

However, users are concerned that the service can cache more data from their computers than they would prefer.

On a Google Labs discussion group, one user said that the security implications of Google caching details of Internet sessions were unacceptable.

"I went to the Futuremark forums and noticed that I'm logged in as someone I don't know. Great, I've used Google's Web Accelerator for a couple of hours, visited lots of sites where I'm logged in. Now I wonder how many people used my cache. I understand it's a beta, sure, but something like that is totally unacceptable."

Google was not immediately available for comment, but said in a Web site statement that the service can receive information such as the user's IP address, computer and connection information, and "personally identifiable information", such as an email address.

"Whenever your computer sends cookies with browsing or prefetching page requests for unencrypted sites, we temporarily cache these cookies in order to improve performance," the company wrote on its Web site.

Information entered in SSL connections, such as Internet banking, will not be cached, the company wrote.

The service is only available to broadband subscribers.

[u][url=\"http://http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39197327,00.htm\"][Source][/url][/u]