Odds and Ends: BBEdit 6.5.3 on Mac OS 8.6; Mozilla

privacy leak?

BBEdit 6.5.3 on Mac OS 8.6 After several readers complained that the "Update BBEdit 6.5.x -> 6.5.3" application is crashing with a Type 3 error, when trying to update BBEdit 6.5.1 or BBEdit 6.5.2 to BBEdit 6.5.3 under Mac OS 8.6 and Mac OS 9, Martin Totusek received the following response from Bare Bones software:

"There does appear to be a problem with the version of the installer package we are using such that the BBEdit 6.5.3 updater crashes under Mac OS 8.6, and we are currently investigating. However, the updater should work properly under any version of Mac OS 9, though there are some third-party extensions which may interfere with the action of any updater if active. Anyone who encounters problems when using the updater in this case should contact us, so that we can isolate the cause."

UPDATE: Bare Bones has released a new BBEdit 6.5.3 update that resolves issues with Mac OS 8.6. A note from the company's technical support department reads:

"This message is being sent in response to a previous report or inquiry you made about a crashing problem which occurred when attempting to run the BBEdit 6.5.3 updater under Mac OS 8.6. Please be advised that since we have now received a fixed version of the installer application, we have created a new BBEdit 6.5.3 update package which you can use to update your current BBEdit 6.5, 6.5.1, or 6.5.2 application. (Note that as only the installer app has changed in the package, and not BBEdit itself, the package name remains the same as before.) The corrected updater is available now for download, via the product update page on our web site: http://www.barebones.com/support/updates.html"

Mozilla privacy leak? A SecuirtyFocus Online article describes a potentially serious privacy bug in the latest builds of Mozilla:

"There is a serious privacy leak in Mozilla that reveals the URL of the page you are visiting to the web server of the page you visited last. The leak not only occurs for links followed on the page (that wouldn't be particularly serious) but also for URLs entered manually or picked from the bookmarks. The bug affects Mozilla 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.1 and probably older versions as well. It also affects Mozilla-based browers such as Netscape 7 and Galeon. The problem is that HTTP requests that are launched from a page's "onunload" handler have the wrong referer (sic): They get the referer of the next page the user is about to visit." More.