Iron: Chrome for privacy fanatics

Filed under: Windows, Google, Open Source, Browsers

Iron: Chrome for privacy fanatics

by Christina Warren Sep 24th 2008

If you want to use Google Chrome but are concerned or have questions about Google's policies for collecting usage data, you might want to give Iron a try.

Iron, developed by German software company SRWare is Chrome stripped of all the user ID information that gave the German government cause for concern.

I don't speak German, but the guys at the Incomplete-News Project have helpfully published an English translation. According to them, Iron is essentially the Chromium source code, with the following modifications:

No unique user-ID
No user-specific information is sent to Google
No alternative error messages
Crash information is not sent to Google
No Google updater

I personally don't have a problem with having my search data transmitted to Google (as I'm sure it is in Safari and Firefox with my search bars now), but I do understand the concerns about data-collection potential.

I downloaded Iron, and other than featuring the same squished blue logo that CodeWeavers uses in its version of Chromium on the default tab page, everything worked exactly as expected.

XP and Vista users can download Iron from SRWare's site.
[via the Incomplete-News Project]

Tags: chromium, crossover, google, google-chrome, iron, wine

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

blankshooting said 2:28PM on 9-24-2008

great tip! and totally agree, google's probably already being evil in its ways of collecting usage data through the search options in firefox and safari. boo!

Scott said 3:22PM on 9-24-2008

Better yet, try UnChrome:
www.abelssoft.net/unchrome.php

Reviewed by Martin at gHacks, here:
www.ghacks.net/2008/09/07/google-chrome-anonymizer

Scott said 3:49PM on 9-24-2008

My mistake - wrong one. This is the one I was thinking of:
http://blog.gjl-network.net/blog/index.php?archives/166-English.html&serendipity[lang_selected]=en

fanboy said 6:15AM on 9-25-2008

Interesting, the site uses google analytics and google ads, irony.

Danny Sullivan said 2:02PM on 9-25-2008

The story you link to about the German government has nothing to do with the user ID issue. The German government quite simply didn't think people should use beta software (apparently, the German government doesn't know much about the web) and that it didn't think people should use a browser that's from Google because somehow that would magically add more of their information to Google. Of course, I don't think they issued a similar warning not to use the IE8 beta from Microsoft, to which all the same exact arguments against Google could be applied.

Christina Warren said 2:13PM on 9-25-2008

OK, awesome. I was unable to parse the whole text, not speaking German, and thought it had to be something more than it being in beta. That it isn't is like, disturbing.

Thanks for the clarification!

Seth Knox said 12:25PM on 12-19-2008

The Berliner Zeitung article does mention the government's concern about Chrome's beta status and Google's data-gathering practices (I'm not weighing in on whether those concerns are valid). However, a significant portion of the article concerns security holes in Chrome, especially concerning the handling of financial data.

CRG said 10:14PM on 12-22-2008

Amazing! Just like government to make a decision that people shouldn't use beta software.

torrent said 10:33AM on 9-26-2008

Source Code available

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4414439

please seed

Jacob said 6:15PM on 9-26-2008

There must be some compatibility issues somewhere. I think IE is still the way to go for everything but videos and Firefox is great for videos.

http://www.rexxsales.com

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