Browzar Unmasked

Yesterday, my wife sent me a link to Browzar, asking what I thought. After glancing over the purported feature list, I responded that Firefox has the same functionality (disable history, clear cookies, etc), and unless they're doing some fancy secure-delete, this isn't going to really offer anything that she doesn't already get.

But, more interestingly, she had heard of it. My wife isn't a bleeding edge Web 2.0 type -- I'd put her merely in the top one-third technically savvy users (she owns and manages her own domain, but doesn't read SlashDot). So, these Browzar people must have made something of a media splash to get her attention.

Turns out, though, none of these media outlets bothered to actually look at the product. This morning, TechCrunch reports that Browzar is little more than a well-promoted adware Browser Helper Object -- in other words, a shim that runs in Internet Explorer that just redirects your queries to known adware/link tracking sites.

Way to go, mainstream tech media. Thanks for the link!