Better still, Brave disables autocomplete by default and sends no requests at all as a user types in the top bar."Įdge, on the other hand, "sends text to as it is typed. "Firefox is significantly more private, sending no identifiers with requests and terminating requests after the first word, so generating a total of 4 requests. "Chrome is the next most aggressive, generating 19 requests to a Google server which, once again, include an identifier that persists across browser restarts. ![]() "The requests to Apple include identifiers that persist across browser restarts and so can be used to link requests together and so reconstruct browsing history. "Safari has the most aggressive autocomplete behaviour, generating a total of 32 requests to both Google and Apple," Leith reported. Most users do not bother, which means web navigation is largely driven by search, plus a few bookmarked sites. Browsers used to distinguish between URLs and searches, but this distinction has largely been lost in favour of a single Omnibox, as Google calls it, which works as a search box unless you type a full and properly formed URL. What if the user types into the browser? In this respect, the URL or search autocomplete feature is key. Firefox, Brave and Safari did not collect any data from a pasted URL. Yandex also transmitted the URL to its own servers before navigation. ![]() ) passed as a parameter and also two identifier-like quantities (psi and sugkey)." Similarly, Edge sent the URL to the Bing autocomplete API complete with identifying cookie. In the case of Chrome: "This generates a request to with the URL details (i.e. Leith started by pasting (not typing) an URL into the browser's top bar. Leith explained that to ensure a true fresh install, he deleted configuration data left behind in the user profile.īut the focus of Leith's research is on what happens with a default install where you choose not to log on. ![]() Whereas Chrome and Firefox use identifiers that are essentially random numbers generated when the browser first starts." The Chrome and Firefox identifiers do persist between sessions, but are reset if you do a fresh install. "That's tied to the physical hardware of the device and can't easily be changed. "Edge and Yandex both use hardware identifiers," he said. Is Edge really worse than Chrome – the latter being from one of the biggest data collectors in the business? The problem, according to Leith, is to do with identifiers that browsers send to the vendors to enable different searches and sessions to be tied together. In the first (most private) group lies Brave, in the second Chrome, Firefox and Safari and in the third (least private) group lie Edge and Yandex." The, er, borne identity In the paper, Leith said: "We find that the browsers split into three distinct groups from this privacy perspective.
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