TER General Board

Question about private browser sessions
hound_dog69 41 Reviews 1244 reads
posted

Anybody know about the actual performance of the various browsers in the private/stealth/incognito browsing modes? i.e. What sorts of web turdlettes do they leave behind, if any? Are they really clean, or is a run of CC Clean in order?

They only keep things from showing up on your local machine. They do not do anything about your presence online.

JayB555296 reads

... always run the same ole cleaners, afterwards!
Ya cant trust anything, to be totally efficient.
It does cut down on alot of the tracks you see but, its all still recorded somewhere ... perhaps they are giving us the feeling its safer, to see where we go when we think they ain't lookin' ... hehehhh
... no such thing though! Don't blindly trust this is actually hiding anything! ... nada!

Bob L227 reads

Interesting!
What stuff do you run with a Mac?
Is safari a good browser  to use or do you suggest a different one for Mac to help being squeeky clean?

JayB555205 reads

Microsoft Internet Explorer browser:

Under the View | Internet Options | Advanced Option of your browser's toolbar -
make sure the Security/Do not save encrypted pages to disk box is checked.

Netscape browser:

Under the Network Preferences | Cache Option of your browser's toolbar -
make sure the Allow Persistent Caching of Pages Retrieved through SSL box
is not checked. This feature determines whether the pages you view using SSL
(security using data encryption) are stored in the cache. The default, unchecked,
does not allow SSL pages to be cached.

Other Browsers for Mac:
http://www.pure-mac.com/webb.html

The New Firefox for Mac:  Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or higher ...
Top bar - tools - start private browsing

Other Browsers Supporting Secure Transactions:
Consult your owner's manual or check the browser's Help function.

If used properly, it leaves nothing behind, AFAIK. Any bookmarks or downloads will survive. It is actually saving some the usual stuff during the session, but then removing everything when the session ends. Hence, a browser crash while in private mode will likely require some manual clean-up. Most importantly, IMO, is that not all add-ons properly support private mode. The Mozilla folks are allowing some latitude with developers, allowing them to wait until their next version, whenever that happens, to properly support private mode. I have about a dozen add-ons, and I doubt that every one behaves properly yet. Hope this helps.

best to use firefox in 'private browsing' mode (with all caching off) with something like the betterprivacy add-on. private browsing in firefox doesn't keep history, etc., and clears everything upon exit. but if you turn off caching then you won't get caught by any interim snapshots while your firefox session is still live. it will also flush out all your cookies at the end of the session. (safari private browsing is also good, but i don't know if it takes care of flash cookies - but i doubt it. plus no third-party add-ons that can help you out as well. and firefox is more popular so you have a messier browser fingerprint than with safari.)

betterprivacy helps to get rid of flash-based cookies which private browsing won't touch.

another safe practice is to use something like the phproxy add-on, which easily allows you to browse via various web-based proxies. browsing via web-based proxies is just 'barely' secure, but it just adds a level of obfuscation that doesn't hurt. (urls are 'hidden' and requests are made through the third-party proxy.) problem is that it doesn't always render pages and can also slow everything down. plus the add-on is crap.

man, i wish i could have said all of the above more simply. i think though that if you just take away this:

- firefox in private browsing mode with betterprivacy add-on
- consider using either a private or web-based proxy

you should be ok.

t/c

How do you turn caching off. Is that something you do in the browser or the system?

you do it in the browswer. in firefox, go to tools -> options -> advanced -> network and set your offline storage to 0 MB of space for cache.

should be a fairly similar procedure for other browsers.

t/c

Why?  Because up until Flash ver. 10, Private Browsing mode for Firefox, IE, Safari didn't do anything to prevent Flash from picking up user cookies.

Yes...  Flash picks up PI information as well.

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