Your IT Consultant

Information Technology Blog
by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Time to Switch Your Default Browser?

April 8, 2019

So much for protecting user’s privacy. Bleeping Computer reported that most major browsers are making a change that is counter to protecting your privacy. “A HTML standard called hyperlink auditing that allows sites to track link clicks is enabled by default on Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Microsoft Edge, but will soon have no way to disable it.” Essentially, hyperlink auditing allows a website to determine what links you clicked on exposing where the request came from and where the request is going to. Hovering the mouse cursor over the link will not display the tracking mechanism either.

Unfortunately, major browsers are making a U-turn and will remove the ability to disable hyperlink auditing. It appears that only Firefox and Brave will disable hyperlink auditing by default, but give you the option to enable it if you are so inclined. Hmm. Perhaps it’s time to change default browsers again.

Email:   Phone: 703.359.0700
Digital Forensics/Information Security/Information Technology
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsimek
https://amazon.com/author/johnsimek
https://senseient.com