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HTML5: Who Needs Privacy?

New web standard leaves your computer wide open

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff

Posted Oct 11, 2010 2:59 PM CDT

(Newser) – There’s been plenty of worry over the years about Internet privacy, “but the alarmists have not seen anything yet,” warns the New York Times in a front-page story on the dangers of HTML5. The new web standards will bring tons of new features—“It’s going to change everything … it’s the new web,” gushes one web developer—but it will also make surfer’s computers much more vulnerable to trackers.

HTML5 allows large amounts of data to be collected and stored on a user’s hard drive while they’re online—kind of like cookies on steroids. As a result, advertisers may be able to see weeks or months worth of data, including emails, web history, address, shopping cart items and more. It “gives trackers one more bucket to put tracking information into,” says the CTO for the Opera browser, while a privacy advocate frets that the standard “opens Pandora’s box of tracking in the Internet.”

The new HTML5 may leave your computer wide open.
The new HTML5 may leave your computer wide open.   (Shutterstock)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 9 comments
SteveLee
Oct 12, 2010 9:25 AM CDT
As the Internet useage will become more Mobile centric as three million-more i-Pads are sold every month the iAd and other advertising companies are more concerned with the users current location than with what kind of content is on the page they are using. The Evil Genius has more in mind for the Internet than selling a few million-more I-Pads every month: http://www.flixya.com/post/brightlights/1989192/Apples_Plan_To_End_The_Free_Internet
dandmcd
Oct 12, 2010 12:14 AM CDT
This is why companies like Google and Apple are pushing HTML5 over Flash and other Web standards. Apple is more concerned about collecting data from their customers using iPods and PC's than they are with offering new technologies that advance the web.
brawne
Oct 11, 2010 11:23 PM CDT
Back when the internet was just a hallway with a couple of doors, Larry Ellison paid 54 million dollars for a company called Blue Mountain. It was where I lived and he and his guys jetted in for the deal and I had to sit and listen about 'reach' for a couple of hours. They were buying 'reach'. I was playing pool with a friend in a very nice, buy-a-cigar place. He asked for my email. I had an AOL thing that I'd never used and I said no. Some Oracle guy took a picture of me and I didn't realize that pictures were no longer for scrapbooks. Next day Larry emailed me without knowing my address--so, I lost that illusion and I started seeing this chick in a white tank top and white shorts everywhere and I lost my illusion about that. Well, I didn't see it because I never went back to the internet until 2008. But friends would call and say look--this guy posted this as his wife--and it was me. Or some chick said it was her and it was me. Don't care because I turned my head when he took it and all you see is that bod and that long hair covering my face that I had till 50. Then, I did what any person with Oracle all over them would do. I legally changed my name and lost the AOL address. No one can find me. I've had four names since I met you in high school. Because privacy is all there is. Fool me once, Larry. But, I did buy the stock.

 
Internet • online privacy • World Wide Web • HTML • Internet privacy • HTML5

 
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