So, there’s a new free Google product available for download called the Google Accelerator. It’s available here, but you’d best to let this one pass you by. The accelerator uses a concept called a proxy to store web visited pages and “prefetch” others that you might visit, giving you the perception of a faster online experience. Aside from the security concerns over passing all of your personally identifiable traffic and browsing information through one company (though one could argue that your ISP technically does this, too), the accelerator also caches files that may contain vital information that you might pass along the web, such as your back account number.

What’s worse is that Google’s method of prefetching links — downloading all the links on the page that you might click on — has the unfortunate side effect of breaking some web applications (via). For instance, if your using a database application with a “delete database” link on the page, well, when Google prefetches the link, it deletes your database for you. Bad news bears.