Brian Masinick
In fairness, both to our own personal desire for some measure of privacy and security, and also for free software efforts like Mozilla and others:
1) Most Web browsers, (and definitely both Firefox and Google Chrome (and Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari) all use cookies and other mechanisms. at least when configured in standard form.
Originally these mechanisms were for “convenience”, but even as far back as the late eighties and early nineties, there were discussions and concerns about security versus openness and ease of use. Many of the protocols developed early on, particularly as the Internet progressed from the standard interfaces of the early days, FTP, Gopher, and a few others, toward http, and later https, and once again, as Java became a common byte compiled programming language and the Web languages – Javascript (not very much like Java at all, just a “convenient name to indicate that it was a “script” language with slight similarity to Java because both were used for network programs), then PHP, Perl, Python, and others, there were MANY concerns about security.
Java, over the years, has made great strides, and some of the other languages have, too, but to truly “secure” the fort, so to speak, not only have Firewall technologies improved, but much more data and network encryption technologies have evolved, and various multi-factor authentication strategies have been developed.
2) The typical browser is not necessarily guilty alone of data insecurity, but unless the modern browser has provisions for all of these technologies, and fewer defects concerning memory leaks, wide open insecure ports, etc., there is work to do.
3) So here’s the deal: by default, very few (if any) Web browsers are set up by default for MAXIMUM SECURITY, unless they are part of a company’s enterprise security software suite. Most consumer products are designed with default settings aimed at ease of use – but the trade-off is that they transmit details that can potentially be used by companies, and even by hackers, to gain information about your buying habits, browsing habits, and maybe more, depending on what you do when you use your computer.
Is this “dangerous”? I put that word in quotation marks. Why? I have been using Web Browser technology since it’s earliest inception, even a couple of years before companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, and others started using the Internet for Electronic Commerce.
I’ve had spammers and hackers send me stuff, and once I had someone find my phone number and try to get me into a scam. I ALMOST got caught that once, but I was suspicious about it, so I called a friend of mine in the local police department for his opinion and he agreed that it was a scam.
I assisted him and the local PD, who cooperated with Federal agencies, and they actually CAUGHT the perpetrators.
Could that happen again? Maybe. But the fact is that I have been doing network computing since the eighties; I use standard products; sometimes I add Firewalls, but I rarely add EXTRA protection or modify all of the defaults. I have never once (not even from the scam) lost money from someone stealing information from me.
4) Could someone else be compromised? Sure, it’s still possible. But using antiX, MX Linux, or most Linux distributions, with at least standard packages, and more if you are paranoid, is QUITE LIKELY to provide sufficient security for most people. If you operate a business, then you need BETTER protection, but there are MANY enterprise grade tools – SSL security additions, SECURITY ENHANCED Linux features, etc. Many intranet / extranet features should be added to add a fortress around your information, plus tools within your network to protect against insider theft, insider trading or leaking of company secrets, etc. I worked as a project testing manager with network security for a couple of financial service companies just prior to retirement, and Linux has some of the best software to work in conjunction with this type of protection.
CONCLUSION: Bottom line: don’t fret for routine personal browsing; use what is comfortable for you, just exercise reasonable caution. For small business, look into your options for more. For enterprise computing, get a network management team with expertise in network performance AND security. That’s FREE advice from an experienced, retired software professional.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian Masinick
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