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Sunday, December 26, 2010

I don't know how well it works, how long it might work, or whether it will work under the soon to be fully public Google Chrome OS. But it is a Chrome browser addon in line with the sidebar link to the EFF and ACLU and what each stands for in terms of privacy as properly an inherent civil liberty.

With that headline, the item is a disconnect utility you can add to lessen or wholly avoid tracking of your access to and use of the internet, the web, the websites you access and how you interact with each. Private parties attaining and cataloging and selling usage pattern data seems inimical to who we should want to be as a nation. It is bad enough the NSA listens to us without any redress or means of stopping it, but at least there may be a good chance to curb the information privateers.

This link is to the blog, where you can unwind things from there to download the browser addon - not yet available for FireFox or IE, but intended to be so during the first quarter of 2011. I could put a ton of links in but if you Google the man's name and the DISCONNECT name together, you will get news links and installation info you might miss from the single above blog link.

Exactly how the website connections will work, if the tracking is disabled, is probably a case-by-case experience to encounter once the utility is installed. I only learned of the addon days ago, and installed it today, so I have no user experience to report. It certainly is not an addon that Google's pages have prominently featured. Yet they have not flamed it off their search engine returns either, much to their credit.

CNN-Tech has an online report, here. It is good for background on things, since to my knowledge there's no Wikipedia page online yet about the product or the author.


Screenshot, this link. As always click to enlarge and read. The link is to the installation page for this Google Chrome addon. Apparently it installs on at least one other chromium-based browser, SRWare Iron (note the flag toggle, for the page in English).

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"If the founding fathers had planned the revolution by telephone [or on the Internet], we'd still be singing, God Save the Queen." - Michael Tigar