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Safari privacy issue with "fraudulent site" option?

If one uses the "Fraudulent sites" option in Safari, does Apple or Google know each and every website you visit?


User uploaded file


In other words, does a database download to your computer and the websites you visit are checked against it locally. Or, does every website you visit get reported and checked against an external database at Google or Apple, etc.?


If it's the latter, I think this has far too much potential for privacy abuse. I've searched around for information on this, but have run into dead ends. Is there an expert here and/or someone who has information on just specially how the " "Fraudulent sites" option in Safari works in this regard?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), i7 Quad-core 17 inch 1920x1200

Posted on Aug 31, 2013 6:00 PM

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7 replies

Sep 2, 2013 6:12 PM in response to Linc Davis

Hmmmm....


via MacWorld:


Nothing in Apple’s ridiculously minimal release notes suggested that this feature existed. But this time, the company’s intransigence in telling you what it has changed in the software you use may have further consequences. How Safari could “know” about these phishing and malware sites raises all kinds of interesting questions. Now we can tell you with reasonable confidence how it all works—but because Apple has not done the same thing, we cannot say with certainty that it is completely private, or that Safari is not sending information about the pages you visit to a third party.

Sep 2, 2013 6:15 PM in response to andyBall_uk

The guide says this:


The Safe Browsing Lookup API has the following drawbacks:



Privacy: The URLs to be looked up are not hashed so the server knows which URLs the API users have looked up.


Has anyone verified for sure how Apple Safari implements the API?


As Linc mentioned above, there's a local database called safebrowsing.db, but that doesn't nessearily tell the entire story of what goes on in the entire lookup process.

Safari privacy issue with "fraudulent site" option?

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