On: Re: The Spirit of Free Software, or the Reality

[rgbrenner]

You're making a substantially different claim than the article. Where did you get the idea that it's sending every URL to google?

[tedunangst → rgbrenner]

The follow up email.

[duskwuff → tedunangst]

Is false. Google is big, but even they couldn't handle the load of a large fraction of the world's web browsers sending them a request for every page loaded. That'd be insane.

Google Safe Browsing is based on a Bloom filter. The browser downloads the filter in a series of requests when it first starts up, or when the filter is out of date. It also sends a followup request if it finds a hit, but this is rare unless you're actually about to visit a site that's been flagged as unsafe.

[rsuelzer → duskwuff]

Maybe? They essentially do this with Google Analytics? No?

[johnmaguire → rsuelzer]

Not to mention Google Chrome's search suggestions?

[magicalist → duskwuff]

> It also sends a followup request if it finds a hit, but this is rare unless you're actually about to visit a site that's been flagged as unsafe

And the followup still doesn't send the URL or even a hash of the URL. It sends just a prefix of the hash to download all URL hashes matching that prefix to do the comparison to the actual current URL locally.