Private browsing modes in four biggest browsers often fail Features in the four major browsers designed to cloak users' browser history often don't work as billed, according to a research paper that warns that users may get a false sense of security when using the built-in privacy settings. The private-browsing modes are supposed to allow users to visit a website without leaving any …
and imagine instead that he's looking for smut: it's almost amusing.
Anyway, a better way to keep people from snooping your history is for everyone to have their own accounts in which they can do as they please. I also make use of Mac OS X's Guest Account when someone wants to, for instance, quickly check their email: as soon as they're done, all tracks are erased.
> and imagine instead that he's looking for smut: it's almost amusing.
Isn't that the point of the advert?
I.e. a the minds of all the husbands watching suddenly get transfixed thinking of pron, and the wives' get transfixed thinking of presents.
"The researchers said that to the best of their knowledge they are the first to demonstrate a way to detect private browsing mode"
And how exactly does this matter to the website? Why would a website want to know if a user was browsing in private mode? It's more useless than detecting if a user has Javascript or cookies disabled.
A good waste of cash if you ask me.
"when IE and Safari encounter a self-signed certificate, it is stored in a certificate vault that is preserved even after the private session ends."
Like the donkey porn sites you dont want your wife to see have self signed certificates!
Erm, i am not talking about my wife... it's a mate's wife, yes that's it, a mate, not me, nosireebob.
Ahem
So...you don't want your *mate's* wife to see that you've been browsing donkey porn but you're OK with your own wife knowing the explanation for your sticky keyboard...hmmm...
Just a shot in the dark but I suspect the inadequacies of private browsing may be the least of your problems!
Mines the one with the dark glasses and wet-wipes in the pocket...
Modern computers can boot from all sorts of odd little things, like SD cards and the like.
Modern operating systems, such as Ubuntu, can be installed on such, with "persistence" so stuff like wifi keys and passwords won't be forgotten each time.
Thus, if you want a true "private mode" for all your sick desires, boot up from SD card, browse, get your yayas and then restart back in Windows with the SD card safely in your pocket. That ought to be pretty spouse/parent-proof, and if questions get asked, it's a doddle to "format" these things in a digital camera.
This is, I should point out, not something I have a need to do, but come on guys - we're supposed to be smarter than the average grockle, we ought to have ways and means that are somewhat more foolproof than "Private mode"...
My main computer is an eeePC 901 which is just fine for normal use, but if you start trying anything funny (like an operating system within an operating system), it will struggle. Not so much with lack of processor power, but there's only so much you can do with 1Gb RAM and no swapfile.
Secondly, wouldn't a virtual machine risk leaving bits behind on the host's harddisc? Bits in fragmented files and such?
Nah, I think it would be quicker, safer, and more secure to run a completely different OS from an SD card. There doesn't need to be any evidence of this in the main system (in other words, no VM software), you just pop it in and boot from it. When you're done, shutdown and eject it.
Would it not be just as easy to start a virtual machine under something like Sun VirtualBox, do your "essential" surfing then destroy the machine in its entirety afterwards? By "in its entirety", I mean blat it from the config, any virtual disks, etc.
Just floating that one out there as it's what I do and have thought it to be pretty secure. Although, currently downloading "Sandboxie" to give that a try. Nice one "Anonymous Coward - Don't forget "flash cookies"! #"
On UNIX one could set up a special user account and arrange the browser to run in the context of that while sharing the X-session (= rw group permissions for .xauthority, group = special user's group) with the real user.After a session the dedicated account's home directory would be wiped and restored into a default state (for default browsers settings and such) from an archive.
Or, if using Firefox, you could just have a shortcut handy to start it with -ProfileManager, then create a fresh profile to use each time you want to do some private browsing, and delete it on next startup in this manner (or manually rm -rf the folder).
I do just this to be sure of nothing logging what I do when using web banking, or indeed if I simply want to test if some browsing problem is related to my normal profile, so use a blank profile with no addons etc.
I know chrome can be told to use a specific folder for its profile too, but it doesn't have the nice front-end profile manager that 'firefox -ProfileManager' gives you.
"Watch the IE8 ad where the chap is buying his wife a "gift" and imagine instead that he's looking for smut: it's almost amusing."
Could, of course, be a smutty gift he's buying for her. They even have those advertised in the back pages of The Grauniad 'Weekend' magazine on Saturdays, so that must be OK, surely....
Now remind me; which wedding anniversary is 'Latex'?
Just stick your firefox profile on a ramdisk. On Linux that's as simple as symlinking to or mouting a tmpfs at ~/.mozilla
something like:
mount -t tmpfs tmpfs ~user/.mozilla
This has the added advantage that the old .mozilla will reappear as soon as you unmount it.
For the truly paranoid, you could create a new user with their entire home directory on tmpfs, which gets created fresh whenever they log in, just incase something like flash writes to its own directory.
You can even use the sux program to run firefox (or any other browser) as that user without logging out of your own account or closing your non-private browsing session.
in private browsing mode will still save a list of saved items to the 'recent' section of the Firefox icon's jump list.
Firefox may say you're in a private browsing session but it will still rat you out to Windows Explorer (who, as everyone knows is a loose lipped gossip & loose legged whore of the first order).
I said BANKING, you letcherous b*astards ;-)
My missus, who doesn't understand the feature, just watches pr0n inhibited. She finds better sites than me, FFS!
<BOFH>
Nice that when she's gone to work I get a chance to check her machine out...for essential upgrades, natch...
</BOFH>
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