Last year, Browzar was released and marketed as the world’s most privacy maintaining browser. The basic idea behind this light weight browser is that it does not keep track of your browsing history, stored files, cookies or anything else. What it claims is that it deletes all it’s user history once you close the browser window. There is no need also for installation, you simply click the file and you are ready to serve the net. The small size of the browser comes from the fact that it’s heavily based on the Internet Explorer engine. Ow, yes that means it uses ActiveX, and along comes every security hole that goes with it. So if you ever heard this browser is more secured, it probably is a false statement. Privacy and security are two different things here. Privacy means disallowing people to see your browsing habits, while security means stopping unauthorized access to your login accounts, or system resources. The company behind Browzar makes its revenue from the ads that are delivered with search results, which some call it very annoying.
I have not given this browser much testing, but I can see now it’s tab based. GHacks wrote about how unsecured this browser is, and how it is promoting fake privacy features. The writer points to the slashdot post highlighting a possible issue when logging to Gmail from IE and Browzar consecutively. Looking at the scenario however, and trying it my self, I do not see any problems with that case at all. Every time you close your Browzar window, it clears all your session caches, history files, cookies and all. There have been reports however that the browser is being treated as malware by malware removal softwares. The reason behind this is that Browzar does redirection on web searches to online advertisements. The browser anyhow could be helpful if you want to go to a public place and use the net. Just take the small browser with you there, run it (no installation needed remember) and you are done. I wouldn’t recommend it for personal continuous use however for several reasons:

  1. It is still based on IE, so it’s not secured and probably has all the same bugs in it.
  2. It is not widely adapted, so you are likely to face problems with many sites
  3. Using your home PC, I think you would be more convenient with the cookies enabled. After all, it is a technology for the good of the web.
  4. If you can, you would probably prefer to get rid of unnecessary ads.
  5. You cannot do any custom settings like Proxy, custom homepage and similar stuff.

Their theme is very nice however, iPod taste so obvious in it.

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