PSC products: privacy & search Hijack

[Paul Wilders]

An article raising some serious concerns appeared yesterday (?) on newsbytes regarding privacy and "search hijacking."

www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175035.html

For anyone using NSClean 6.10, we saw this back in Netscape 6.00 and the beta releases and dealt with this then. I'm writing this just to minimize questions coming in to support about this - if you're using NSClean 6.10, go check your settings in the PRIVACY tab of NSClean - there are actually three SEPARATE aspects to this - the "search" code and the "autocomplete" code along with what is called "anonymous tracking" which is what this particular article is about. These checkboxes are there in NSClean *ONLY* if you're using Netscape 6.

Check off:

"Block autocomplete"
"Block Anonymous tracking"
"Block Search referrals"

... if you haven't already based on NSClean's documentation. "Cleaning up" is more than just deleting files. Just wanted to reassure those using NSClean though that this wasn't news to us. *

And for those using IEClean for IE, ALSO covered ... Privacy tab in IEClean, make sure that

"Block autocomplete"
"Block remote hit logging"
"Block MSN Search hijacking"

are selected in IEClean. Not news there either although the above-referenced article failed to note that searches are filtered through MSN by default unless changed. Just wanted once again to reassure our customers.

source: PSC/Kevin McAleavey.

Just a heads up for IEClean and NSClean users.

regards.

paul