Apple Inc has accepted distribution of Opera Software’s Internet browser for its iPhone after a long review, opening a new and potentially lucrative market it has so far closely guarded. There are numerous versions of Apple’s own browser on App Store, but Norway-based Opera is the first rival to get access to iPhone. Opera applied on March 23 for its mobile browser to be distributed on iPhone, and it was available for downloading to consumers early on Tuesday, three weeks later. Usually the review process takes up to one week, developers say. Analysts have said the decision was difficult for Apple — whose application store is the only way to distribute software for iPhone users — as its Internet browsing function is key to the success of the iPhone.
The assumption that an Internet user can be recognized by his IP address and his Cookie files only was proven to be incorrect. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Organization has launched their own online-test Panopticlick(http://panopticlick.eff.org/) which is designed to demonstrate how easy it is to recognize the needed machine profile among hundreds of others on the Net. It all comes down to “digital hand-prints” – the data which is left over on the visited resource by the users computer, especially his Internet browser. When taken together, the information about users plugins, time zone, display settings, etc can form a unique profile which will lead back to the original user, even if his cookies were erased and the IP address changed. It is quite easy to see the possible practical applications of this, EFF states that advertisement companies have been using this methods of profiling for a long time now.