In last week's Friday Linker, I pointed out a new browser that was marketed to protect your privacy to deleting your cookies, history, caches, and auto-complete forms, called Browzar. In less than three days, it's been mentioned on BBC, Digg, C/Net and Slashdot. People were calling it one of the newest browsers to enter the market that could give leaders, such as Microsoft and Mozilla, a run for their money. When it first started to make headlines, there were rumors that it was just a stripped down version of Internet Explorer with some extra functionality.

The Web3.0log wrote a great article that gave good reason to believe that Browzar was much more than a privacy-focused program, but a browser that forced its users to click on the Overture advertisements and wouldn't let users change the homepage from their search engine. The creators didn't even write a script to allow the cache and history to be properly deleted, but passed it off as the browser's main features. A commenter on Slashdot.org would later write that after logging to Gmail in Browzar, and then visiting gmail.com in Internet Explore, found that it was still authenticated. Another commenter on Reddit gave even more compelling reasons to believe that Browzar wasn't up to par with their marketing team.

Although many people are saying that this is another way for a start-up to create a business model, there are other ways for Internet browsers to get some extra cash. Mozilla has monetized Firefox by have search companies bid for the default engine. Flock, another browser based on Mozilla, is also doing the same. If the people behind Browzar plan to stick with this model, they should at least provide a disclaimer and allow users to opt-out. Whatever your thoughts are about this program, at least understand what it does before downloading it ;-).