In October, Google engineer Brian Kennish debuted Facebook Disconnect, a Chrome extension that wipes out virtually all evidence of Facebook from your Web experience. Since then, Kennish has quit his job with Google to focus entirely on Disconnect, another extension for Chrome and RockMelt that aims to help users to block the larger scope of tracking devices on the increasingly social Web.

Kennish released Facebook Disconnect in October and the extension quickly gained popularity, hitting the top 10 list of Google Chrome extensions. He told us that he quit his job at Google three weeks later so that he could “develop tools that make it trivial for the average user to understand and control the data they share whenever they browse or search the Web.” He said that he thinks Google is “collecting more personal data than any other company” and “to fight for user privacy while working there would’ve been impossible.”

Disconnect, similar to his earlier project, blocks a number of third-party widgets from sites like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo, as well as de-personalizes search at the cookie level, allowing you to remain logged-in to services like iGoogle or Gmail without having your search queries attached to your Google profile.

Kennish said that, while the tool is in a primitive state, he hopes it will have a larger effect on the debate over privacy on the Web.

“Realistically, Disconnect won’t have a significant direct impact on the average user’s privacy — Adblock (and I mean the whole suite) is the most successful browser extension and used by less than 1% of the Web population,” said Kennish. “So government policy and what browser vendors ship natively is more important to me. I’m hoping to show a better way through software and have a butterfly effect on policy and browser implementation.”

Kennish calls the “Do Not Track” method of opting-out “a bad model for defending online privacy because phones ring and get your attention, where Web bugs are invisible and go unnoticed.”

Indeed, last summer one online advocacy group released a browser extension that alerts you“whenever your personal information is being sent to Google servers.” The result was a near constant barrage of alarm bells – if your phone rang this often, you would go insane. Disconnect takes a less obnoxious method, showing a running tally of how many calls have been blocked in the extension’s toolbar icon. Clicking on the icon also allows you to quickly allow for unblocking because, no matter our privacy talk, these tools are also useful in our online lives and not always unwanted. Kennish’s point is more that the user should be allowed to opt-in, rather than needing to opt-out – an oft-heard refrain in online privacy discussions.

Kennish said that he started with blocking standard third-party social widgets “because I consider them the most dangerous third-party resources and there didn’t seem to be another tool that blocks them out of the box. The prevalence of these widgets means they can report on almost all your browsing activity, which can then be linked to databases full of the social data you intentionally share.”

While Disconnect may be in early stages and not have a “significant direct impact” for the average user, the tool could be useful for those concerned about how different social tools are keeping track of your browsing habits. The extension is available for both Google Chrome and RockMelt.

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2010 will go down as quite a year in the world of online privacy, possibly the one security experts will point to as a major turning point in the world of cyberscares, hacks and threats.  So how will that bode for 2011?  And who will come out on top as more sophisticated and privacy aware: users, Web sites or hackers?

Here are 5 privacy alerts to watch to make sure you’re one step ahead…

1. Mobile Mayhem – How many iPhones, Androids and iPads were under the Christmas tree this year?  Certainly enough to ensure the security of mobile devices will be big news in 2011.  In September, market research firm IDC predicted that shipments of smartphones would reach 270 million units in 2010 – a 55% increase over the year before.  Phones without Internet connectivity are a thing of the past, and the rise of apps featuring location based services and mobile payments only increases the risk of attack.  And it appears that attacks focused on mobile Web applications will surpass device-specific attacks in 2011. Already, phishing, data releases, and other threats have spread to popular mobile platforms like iOS and Android. Look for those trends to continue, putting consumers in danger.

2. Social Network Insecurity – It was an eventful 2010 for social networks, none more so than the leader of them all, Facebook, which faced app privacy breaches, lawsuits and more.  The end of the year saw the site reworking its disclosure policy to protect researchers from lawsuits, and experts expect to see more of that in the New Year from Facebook as well as rivals like Twitter, Groupon and LinkedIn.  2010 also saw large-scale attacks and malware spreading at both Facebook and Twitter.  In 2011, expect to see the importance of Web app security and social networking rise, as Web developers try to balance growth and new tools with data privacy and app security.  Up ahead, also look for employers to translate these concerns into stricter provisions in the workplace to prevent security breaches and potential data loss.

3. URL Ugliness - When you have just 140 characters to share your location or express your thoughts, you don’t want to be bogged down with a lengthy link.  But, the same features, quick links and quick news, that make Twitter a go-to site are the most dangerous, as we learned in 2010.   Other URL shortening services like bit.ly are great, but also an incredibly easy way for hackers to send you to unexpected, and malicious, Web pages.  Security experts are already out front, warning consumers to make sure the link they clicked really looked like it was headed to their intended destination. Security firm McAfee says that every minute more than 3,000 URLs are shortened online. That’s a wide, open door for hackers, so beware.

4. Cloud Computing – With the rise of cloud computing, where people store data and use applications on remote computers, rather than on their own desktops or laptops, comes a whole new privacy pandora’s box for consumers. As the cloud moves into mainstream usage, hackers will follow, predict security experts such as those at ISCA Labs who contend, “Cloud services will become prime targets for hackers wanting to gain access, not just to a specific company’s data but possibly to multiple victims simultaneously.”  The technology could also bring legal issues for users with the potential for billing disputes and fights over the release of data.  So the best defense, in the end, may be the oldest defense:  backing up all your data on your own computers.

4. Location-Based Leaks – It’s fun to ‘check in’ and tell friends where you are, where you are going and what you are doing.  But, then again, in the world of hackers and online data, who are your “friends?”  Geo-location social networking sites like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places undoubtedly create cool possibilities for finding friends and finding deals, but criminals will catch up to this too in 2011. Computer criminals can observe a person’s traveling behavior to create convincing phishing e-mails or other cyberattacks.  Therefore, location-based service users should be aware of their Web activities, and proceed with caution.

5.  Friendly Fire – You know not to accept the email from the man in Nigeria asking for money, or your long-lost “Aunt Sue” looking to make a connection.  But what about the email from the friend promising a free meal at a restaurant or a great deal on a new iPhone?  Those are the types of “friendly fire” attacks likely to spread in 2011 with the rise of next generation viruses like Koobface that make it easy for hackers to personalize their attacks. And their success will lead to widespread imitation, security firm McAfee warns, predicting, “personalized attacks are about to get a whole lot more personal.”  Cybercriminals can use tools to gather information about you leading to specially crafted e-mails and other attacks, so be warned, and be wary.

Tech nerds developing software by day, unveiling privacy threats by night: is this the wave of the future?  If the latest case of a privacy breach by Mozilla is any example then, yes, and the future is here.

Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, revealed this week that it accidentally exposed 44,000 inactive user accounts belonging to addons.mozilla.org on its public server.

And how did the open source company become aware of the exposure?  Through the company’s web bounty program, which allows volunteers to submit security-related bugs.

The volunteer, a security researcher by day, first notified the company of the breach on December 17^th, just two days after Mozilla announced it was expanding its vulnerability rewards program to include Web properties.

That news came on the heels of a similar move by Google.

With this breach, the volunteer discovered the database, which contained 44,000 inactive user accounts for the addons.mozilla.org site, was inadvertently placed on a public-facing Web server, explained Chris Lyon, Mozilla’s director of infrastructure security, in a blog posting.

Lyon stressed that the exposure “posed minimal risk to users.” The organization erased all the passwords, which were encrypted, and has since disabled those inactive accounts for good measure.

It also accounted for every download of the database.

The Mozilla Foundation notified all account holders by e-mail on December 27 of the exposure.

For its bounty program, Mozilla encourages researchers to download the open source code for its Web applications and look for errors.

Just last July, Mozilla increased the bounty it pays researchers from $500 to a maximum of $3,000.

In an effort to address mounting criticism of the privacy issues surrounding Google Buzz, the search giant is going to ask all Buzz users to confirm or change their privacy settings tomorrow.

Google Buzz

In an announcement that will be coming soon, Google () will admit that they “didn’t get everything right,” which has resulted in serious privacy tweaks since its launch. However, many users weren’t affected by these changes because they had activated Google Buzz () before the privacy updates.

Now in a renewed effort to correct its gaffs, the search company is going to ask all Google Buzz users to confirm (or change) their Buzz settings. This will be

gradually rolled out tomorrow, but the result will be that every user will be prompted with a confirmation page the next time they click the Buzz tab.

It will look something like this:

The page isn’t anything new — it’s really just the Google Buzz settings page. How

ever, Google’s taking a step in the right direction by giving every user a big opportunity to change their privacy settings. It had to be done.

While tomorrow’s move won’t fix the damage that has already been done, perhaps it’ll help get Congress off of its

back. If it can appease critics on the privacy issues, then it can tackle the bigger challenge: making Goo

gle Buzz into a competitive threat to Twitter () and Facebook (