GET request sighted related to flashgot

[Aerik]

I was messing around with the "live http headers" extension and I noticed something. On any new tab I opened up ever, one of the first thins to show up was something like "# GET http://www.surfcanyon.com/refCheck=flashgot"

I disabled flashgot, restarted, and this went away. What's happening here? Is flashgot regularly pinging surfcanyon.com under the hood and getting you some kind of revenue in a really roundabout way (there are no ads as far as I can see), or is there something suspicious going on with my own firefox?

This has been consistent in my firefox 3.6 profiles, as well as those testing 3.7alpha1 and 3.7alpha2

I've put domains of surfcanyon.com into my hostsfile, added it to blocksite and exexceptions and adblock. Hope to hear this is harmless.

[therube]

http://flashgot.net/surfcanyon

Search Refinements powered by Surf Canyon

This is a new feature introduced in FlashGot 1.2.1.13: thanks to Surf Canyon's real-time search personalizations, we can enrich your search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Craigslist with relevant refinements related to downloadable files and media.

Surf Canyon's patented technology is appreciated by users of their own addon, and by specialized reviewers like the Walt Mossberg column. When they offered to bring a customized version of their service to FlashGot users, we examined their functionality and their attitude to privacy, and we've been pleased by both, finding that they can provide value to our user base.

Of course, this feature is entirely optional. You can turn it off with the little [x] next to the refinements, and turn it back on with the "Show Search Refinements" checkbox in the advanced options tab.

We're very interested in your feedback: especially if you see a bug or a conflict with another extension, please let us know.


Feb 17 2010 Update

Since this feature, after one week of pilot testing, has not being received by some of our users as well as we expected, we decided to remove it.

Thank you for your feedback.

I'll assume this has been gone at least by the v1.2.1.15 release.
(I never knew it was there.)

Yes.

Code: Select all

"v 1.2.1.15
=====================================================
...
- Removed Surf Canyon's search refinement

v 1.2.1.14
=====================================================
x Surf Canyon's search refinement disabled by default
...

v 1.2.1.13
=====================================================
...
+ Search result refinements for downloadable files
and media (thanks Surf Canyon)"

http://flashgot.net/changelog

[Giorgio Maone]

Hope to hear this is harmless.

Yes it was. BTW, those requests did not even get logged, see "1.5 Refinement links" at http://www.surfcanyon.com/privacy#informationCollection

Furthermore, this data is never stored and is immediately discarded once the server responds with the Refinement information.

I'll assume this has been gone at least by the v1.2.1.15 release.

By the 1.2.1.14, actually.

(I never knew it was there.)

Why nobody reads the release notes on the landing page?