Navigate to next or previous posts:

« Signalling by Counting Low Hanging Fruit? | Emergent Chaos Main page | Quickies »

Browser privacy from the server?

(Posted by adam)

A friend writes and asks:

I'm working in NYC now, as the Web Admin for Safe Horizon. We're the largest service agency in the US for victims of violence, crime or abuse. We're interested in putting in some features into our site, but we have to protect our visitor's privacy, since they might be visiting our site from a computer their abuser also uses.

We have instructions on our site detailing how to delete your history, empty your cache, etc. And we don't use cookies. But, I was wondering if there might be an easier way for our visitors to stay safe. I know there are proxy sites that allow you to surf anonymously, and telling them to use those is certainly an option.

But, I was wondering if there was a better way. I found out about a company called ponoi.com. Apparently, they have a "click here once and the rest of your session is not recorded" technology. But, it's only for IE 5+ for Windows. Granted, that takes care of 90% of our visitors. But, if they're doing it, maybe someone else is too.

I'm not familiar with Ponoi: Does it work? Is anyone familiar with something else that the site can do to help? Comments are open, and appreciated!

Posted by adam on December 16, 2004 at 11:55 AM in Privacy . You can: comment, view comments (2), see trackbacks (0) or search Technorati.

Bookmark this post:

Comments

Hi! This is the friend who works at Safe Horizon. Actually, I'm not sure Ponoi does work. It was recommended by another non-profit, but when I visited the site and clicked the "Try It Now" button, I got an error page. It's been that way for more than a week now, so I have serious doubts about the company being alive, much less having a working product.

Rich

Posted by: Rich Baker | December 16, 2004 2:18 PM

I am assuming you are already forcing SSL access and have a reasonably well set up server side security. Therefore the client computer is the greatest security risk. One way to handle this would be to redesign the application with something harder to cache and capture session state. Like Flash for instance. Problem being you will alienate a few users out there. You can so something with a Java applet also but I find Flash is more widely supported....

Posted by: Nudecybot | January 7, 2005 10:43 AM