Iron: Google Chrome without privacy worries

For the Google Chrome Browser lovers worrying about their privacy I found an interesting “heise Security” article, describing Iron, a private version of Google Chrome without the privacy issues.

Let’s quote a part of the article:

SRWare, a German company, has released Iron, based on Google’s Chromium code. The big difference, according to the authors on their German language-only web site, is that the features which have caused people to question the privacy of Google’s browser are all disabled.These features include Chrome’s generation of a unique ID for the installation and recording the exact time of installation, Google Suggest functions in the address bar, alternate error pages, bug reporting, updating and tracking, all of which are completely removed from Iron.Despite the installer only using the German language, that installed browser functioned in English.SRWare has made a Windows executable and the source code available to download.

Iron and Security

The current Beta of Google Chrome use conform Browserstring a dated Version (525.13) of the Rendering-Engine WebKit. Iron use the most recent WebKit-Version (525.19)

At the moment I am testing Iron, till yet no problems encountered.

How to install

Because the installer is in German language, here instruction how to install Iron:

- execute srware_iron.exe
- click “Weiter”
- activate “Ich akzeptiere die Vereinbarung” and click “Weiter”
- click “Weiter”
- click “Weiter”
- click “Weiter”
- click “Installieren”
- click “Fertigstellen”

Have fun with the program!

Article source: heise Security
Iron homepage: SRWare
Iron download: here

News/updates from Iron website

11.10.2008: Adblocker integrated in Iron

The wish of many users comes true: We integrated an Adblocker in Iron!
With a filterlist so nearly all online-advertising can be blocked. A working list can bedownloaded here and just has to be copied to the Iron folder (e.g: C:\Program Files\SRWare Iron\). Note: You must first get the latest version of Iron you can find under “Downloads”.
So Iron is the first Chromium based webbrowser worldwide which has an adblocker included.

03.10.2008: New Iron Translations: Italian, Polish and Hungarian

Included these three new languages additional to German and English in Iron,
they are available in the setup and in the portable version.

01.10.2008: “Official” Iron Portable

In the Download-Section you can find a portable Iron-package officially created by SRWare.
It can run e.g. on an USB-Stick without admin-rights.

26.09.2008: English page online

We can provide an english page for our customers outside of Germany.

Source/more/english Iron page: SRWare

 

Background info/tips from The Chromium Blog: Google Chrome, Chromium, and Google

A number of people have asked about the relationship between Google Chrome, Chromium, and Google, specifically in regards to what data is sent to Google or other providers. This is meant to provide a complete answer to that question, and as you will see below, almost all such communication can be disabled within the options of the product itself. Before getting too deep into the question though, it is helpful to have a common set of terminology.Chromium is the name we have given to the open source project and the browser source code that we released and maintain at www.chromium.org. One can compile this source code to get a fully working browser. Google takes this source code, and adds on the Google name and logo, an auto-updater system called GoogleUpdate, and RLZ (described later in this post), and calls this Google Chrome. As such, everything which applies to Chromium below also applies to Google Chrome, while there are some things that apply to Google Chrome (such as the auto-updater) that do not apply to Chromium.

 

 

Source/more/how-to disable (privacy related) issues and settings: The Chromium Blog