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posted by chromas on Monday June 15 2020, @10:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the AOL dept.

https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/12/google-resumes-its-senseless-attack-on-the-url-bar-hides-full-addresses-on-chrome-canary/

Google has tried on and off for years to hide full URLs in Chrome's address bar, because apparently long web addresses are scary and evil. Despite the public backlash that came after every previous attempt, Google is pressing on with new plans to hide all parts of web addresses except the domain name.

A few new feature flags have appeared in Chrome's Dev and Canary channels (V85), which modify the appearance and behavior of web addresses in the address bar. The main flag is called "Omnibox UI Hide Steady-State URL Path, Query, and Ref" which hides everything in the current web address except the domain name. For example, "https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/lenovo-ideapad-flex-5-chromebook-review/" is simply displayed as "androidpolice.com."


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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday June 15 2020, @02:10PM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday June 15 2020, @02:10PM (#1008130) Journal

    Hmmm … maybe you could create a counter mechanism as follows:

    1. Install a local “web server” that actually accesses the real web site, but adds an URL display bar to the HTML itself.
    2. Take advantage of Chrome redirecting all DNS requests to its own nameserver by redirecting all traffic to the IP address of Google's nameserver to a locally installed nameserver (at the IP level) which simply gives back the local address, thus all the browser accesses go to that local “web server” described in the previous point, while all other programs can continue to use the internet normally (this of course assumes that you're not using Google's nameserver for your normal resolving).

    Or, of course, you could just use a different browser. ;-)

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  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday June 15 2020, @05:48PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 15 2020, @05:48PM (#1008225) Homepage Journal

    redirecting all traffic to the IP address of Google's nameserver to a locally installed nameserver

    And you think Chrome won't have sufficient cryptography to detect the substitution?