Comments on: Private Browsing Not So Private After All

By: Privacy: when using a Web Browser « Cprotocol

Privacy: when using a Web Browser « Cprotocol — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 04:33:43 +0000

[...] gained a lot of attention and all major developers are jumping on the bandwagon (refer here here). gHacks has a nice blog entry and refers to a paper by Katherine McKinley. The author says [...]

By: Why YouTube’s Move to HTML5 May be Huge

Why YouTube’s Move to HTML5 May be Huge — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:59:17 +0000

[...] Privacy: Finally, Flash adds another layer of privacy issues to the browser. Flash can and does save cookies and will do so even in private browsing modes on most browsers. [...]

By: How can i delete the search history - Mac-Forums.com

How can i delete the search history - Mac-Forums.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:09:56 +0000

[...] have too much faith in private browsing: here, here, here and here (just a few). The last one isn’t about private browsing but nice to read to [...]

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:14:45 +0000

Patches have landed on Firefox for this problem. Now it’s up to the plugin makers to patch their stuff so that they realize when Firefox is in Private Browsing NOT to write flash cookies or whatever. :)

By: Aularon

Aularon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:03:08 +0000

Maybe use another firefox profile, with delete everything on exit option.
and if combined with some tool/kernel driver that allows mounting some of computer RAMs as a drive (like what happens on live distros) one can create a profile on the fly on that memory and gooooooooooo (locally) private!
as one once called it “pr0n mode”, not private browsing mode.

By: The Police + Ebay = More Security & Privacy required « Cheap FREE software ! from Jazzy Jeph

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:58:06 +0000

[...] thought whilst on the subject of security and privacy i’d mention this article regarding Flash cookies, in fact Flash cookies you probably didn’t know you had even got, you can probably delete [...]

By: anonymous

anonymous — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:09:52 +0000

Flash’s horrendous “Settings Manager” is a server/web-based app that controls the client comp’s settings using Flash itself. That itself is enuf for me to uninstall that but it’s a necessary evil.

By: RG

RG — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:03:40 +0000

Mostly agree with Vijay. The ‘original’ internet (ie TCP/IP, etc) was not really designed for privacy, and even security and whole host of other things.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:37:45 +0000

The Flash Cookie destroying Firefox extension, Better Privacy, deserves another mention here; ghacks has a nice article on it: http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/23/manage-flash-cookies-with-better-privacy/

By: Dotan Cohen

Dotan Cohen — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:20:31 +0000

@Vijay:
That is a great point. The whole “private browsing” thing is getting so much undeserved attention, it seems that the internet really is for pr0n!

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:47:12 +0000

Vijay, yes you are right. Private Browsing is only there to hide browsing traces on the local computer and apparently that not as good as most users would have thought.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:46:17 +0000

Darkkosmos this will not delete Flash cookies if I’m not mistaken. Not sure about Google Gears and other plugins as well.

By: iampriteshdesai

iampriteshdesai — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:46:07 +0000

In short Safari Sucx!

By: darkkosmos

darkkosmos — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:25:51 +0000

Here is a tip, just get a portable browser and delete the folder once your done with your browsing.

By: Vijay

Vijay — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:18:26 +0000

The Internet was never designed to protect privacy. Every IP is traceable. Tor is a good but painfully slow, but an organisation with resources can track back and find a person IP. Personally, I think private browsing in browsers is only for those who are trying to hide their behaviour from a family member rather than from any external entity.

An implication of this “private browsing” mode is that it makes parental supervision of a child’s browsing behaviour difficult. An option would be for browsers to implement parental controls to they can be switched off if required.