Stumbleupon, Youtube, Firefox and link prefetching
While it will take a long time for the full implications of the Viacom vs. Youtube battle to be known, one thing has already become clear – user privacy is an extremely low priority.
The great fear, of course, is that users are held responsible for having viewed copyrighted content, wittingly or unwittingly.
Yes, I said unwittingly!
You may or may not know this, but many modern applications prefetch links. They’re smart enough to know what link you’re likely to follow next, and they queue it up for you, in advance. This speeds up your browsing experience quite dramatically!
It affects your privacy too though, since the act of prefetching registers that you’ve loaded a particular page, even with no action on your behalf. From Mozilla:
“Privacy implications
Along with the referral and URL-following implications already mentioned above, prefetching will generally cause the cookies of the prefetched site to be accessed. (For example, if you google amazon, the google results page will prefetch www.amazon.com, causing amazon cookies to be sent back and forth.”
(http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Link_prefetching_FAQ)
I know of at least two applications that prefetch links – Firefox and Stumbleupon. You can check your settings quite easily.
- Open a new browser window
- Type about:config in the address bar
- In the ‘Filter’ box, type ‘prefetch’. You might see several settings.
Network.prefetch-next is Firefox’s setting for prefetching links; double-click this to toggle it from on to off, if you like.
If you want to adjust Stumbleupon’s settings for prefetching links, it is easiest to do this through the SU toolbar thusly:
Tools->Toolbar Options->Configuration->Prefetch Stumbles (makes stumbling faster)
So will I be changing my settings? Probably not. I don’t honestly believe that my youtube viewing habits will get me into trouble. However, knowledge is good; and you should know that the prefetching options that speed up your browsing comes with a cost to your privacy.
Tags: Firefox, Google, Privacy, stumbleupon, Youtube
[...] – bookmarked by 5 members originally found by mmkkhh on 2008-10-15 Stumbleupon, Youtube, Firefox and link prefetching http://johnmccollum.co.uk/2008/07/07/stumbleupon-youtube-firefox-and-link-prefetching/ – [...]
Thanks for the info about that! I didn’t know that Firefox did link pre fecthing. Its a good thing because it speeds up the browsing experience. I won’t disable it too. All that mumbo jumbo about holding youtube users liable is just ridiculous. They can’t possibly go after users since there are so many of them
It is a shame that it comes at a cost to your privacy, however I’m going to leave link pre fetching active as I agree that it is a good thing as it speeds up your browsing experience.
Hi,
Interesting point, but in reality for example; it is youtube and not the users of such that I suspect would be held liable. I would compare this privacy issue to accepting a sweet from someone whom had without your knowledge stolen it from the corner shop. How can it be proved that you knowingly accessed a copywritten piece of material when it is on a public site?
regards
George
Privacy is not a luxury available on the Internet. Everything you do on the Internet is monitored to one level or another and by using the Internet you allow your activity to be monitored.
For example, your Internet Provider monitors your connection to the Internet and downloads, websites analyse your activity to check where you go and what you do to better control user activity: even software on your computer is sending information back to the manufactures to inform them of your activities.
You either accept being monitored or you don’t use the Internet; large numbers of people are aware of what the Internet does and how their data is used, but still use it.
That was a very insightful article. As a computer programmer, and recently studying SEO etc, I never really knew about the prefetch methods that browsers use. Of course, IE does not have such options to be turned on
nice posty with some good tips. What really gets me is that you never have any privacy on the internet and especially that a lot of people don’t know this.
In my opinion it depends if you care so much about your privacy as apposed to speed. Me personally I do not use every computer to house my private information. So for example if I was to buy something off of eBay I would use my desktop, but if I am just browsing around on the net I am gonna use my lappy. So in my case you better believe I enabled pre-fetching! =]`
Hey,
good information. Fixing my firefox right now.
handy thanks
Dominik
Hi
Great information. I am a bit paranoid about privacy, so i am going to change the settings right now.
Good one
Morten
It’s an expense we take to speed up our browsing experience, I’m slightly paranoid about my privacy but not to the extent that I want to slow down firefox.
Thanks, I’m a big stumbleupon fan, I’m going to do the firefox changes right away.
Privacy and internet its a joke. You can track very easy every single move, mail, website what anyone is searching for..