h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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I had a nice nap.

Btw, there is something interesting I found in chrome: there is the 'incognito' option. If you click on it, you get a message, reading:


Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:
...
Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
...
People standing behind you

I once thought of downloading smileys (they were nice ones), but when MS told me they weren't MS smileys (which I had thought they were), I cancelled the download.

Good job I'm so cautious when downloading things.

I mean, who'd have thought that somebody could track your keystrokes, enabled by smileys you downloaded?

Oh, and I found the last sentence about people standing behind you quite funny, actually.

That's nasty!

Yes, it is. I wonder how many innocent people download smileys and get their bank accouints robbed etc.

That's what ST was trying to tell everyone when this issue was first raised.. But, of course, he was shot down in flames by those who think they know better

I must have missed that, because this was the first time I've ever heard of it.

Chrome had big security issues, and I think ST delved into it further. I think he's still checking it out now, on his spare PC

But the smileys are not a Chrome issue!

They just rely on the fact that people rarely read the TOS/EULA of anything they download...

No, lil, you misunderstand: that is a *warning* Chrome gives you about downloading smileys from websites. You can't download smileys from Chrome.

Ah! That is why I don't touch anything that is techie!

But you have all those smileys attached to your emails.

I do?

Yes, sometimes.

OOoh! The things I never knew!

There is a smiley, extra for you:

Which reminds me: do we have new smileys yet?

I think you'll find it refers to the 'animated' smileys that the likes of incredimail use which can be imported into most mail programs. There's always a risk when Java or Flash enabled programs are used as it's easier to hide malicious code such as 'keystroke/spy' software.
It all boils down to the end user having appropriate levels of anti-virus and anti-spyware and running them as recommended. That's regardless of the browser in use.
The main issues I've found with Chrome is the same as Firefox, it not recognising what's termed 'safe web colours and fonts'. Now if they'd done what the IE8 Beta has, a 'compatability button', then that would solve a lot of the issues. It doesn't affect what the browser does overall but does make it useful for looking at existing web pages without loss of quality etc.
Chrome and Firefox are quicker to load but then they don't have all the 'gadgets' and stuff as standard like IE, as in menu bars etc. There are a lot of add ons available for Firefox but at least you get the choice whether to load them as opposed to IE that have them incorprated as standard. You can trim a lot of stuff from IE8 though, that improves performance.
Just going back to Chrome, I went to download some miscellaneaous stuff from other websites and didn't get the usual security warning that appears saying something like, 'are you sure you want to download' etc. It just downloaded it. That means basically just be sure what it is you're downloading. No idea whether that happens on a Mac though, assuming Chrome is available for Mac that is.

Oh! I learned a long time ago NEVER to accept animated smilies from Incredimail!

We found a trojan that took aaaages to get rid of. So I never accept anything now