When private browsing was finally introduced into Google Chrome, many users lauded the feature for allowing them "
to plan surprises like gifts or birthdays." Before, it was all too likely that a snooping boss or spouse could uncover a user's secret plans, and it was clear that Google had to do something about it. And do something they did. For party planners and secret shoppers everywhere, Incognito mode was the answer.
Or so users thought. As it soon turned out, Incognito wasn't as private as they had been led to believe — and Chrome wasn't the only browser either. Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer were found to be susceptible as well, putting party planning aficionados everywhere on watch.
What's important to remember is that private browsing doesn't necessarily mean anonymous. Try as you might, almost every modern browser leaves behind some trace of your activity, but there are things you can do to mitigate that risk. Here are a few quick tips for
really keeping your browsing habits secure.
First, it's important to realize what private mode on your browser of choice actually does. Site history, downloads, cookies and temporary files are just some of the the things that aren't stored while browsing a site incognito, or are removed when your session is done. But unbeknownst to many, your browsing habits can still be exposed during that time, and possibly accessed through other, non-conventional means.
Could apps like Slideshow reveal your secret purchases? We doubt it. But you never know.
It's no secret that we here at Tested
love extensions. They can do a lot to improve the overall look and feel of your browser, but according to
researchers at Stanford University's Computer Science Security Lab, they can also be
a very dangerous vector of attack for potential wrongdoers.
Private browsing implementations aren't standardized between browsers, nor are the extensions that go with them. The study found that, in most cases, extensions aren't subject to the same rules as the rest of the browser when used privately, and that many top extensions still stored persistent data to disk that could be later accessed. The solution? If you're truly looking to hide your afternoon webcomic binge, turn off your extensions first.
Trolololololololo.com might be my homepage.
But extensions aren't the only culprits to look out for; Adobe's Flash runtime is also at fault, at least on older PCs. The flaw has been updated in more recent versions, but a problem with the way Flash behaves during private browsing means that cookies and site data will continue to be stored. You can manually check to see what information the plug-in has been hiding through
Adobe's storage settings panel, and delete all listings from there. Or, you can get with the times and upgrade to a more modern release to stop the problem one and for all.
Finally,
Lifehacker points out that it's not just your browser you have to worry about, but the path all those packets take as they're sent from your browser. IP addresses for common websites are fetched from a DNS server and cached locally for faster access — a practice that still continues after you've gone private. There's no real way to turn this functionality off — it's baked right into Windows, Mac and Linux after all — but there is a way to remove your history.
In Windows, you can use "
ipconfig /displaydns" from the command line to see what sites have been stored, and "
ipconfig /flushdns" to clean them out. Mac users, meanwhile, simply need to invoke "
dscacheutil -flushcache" from Terminal to return everything back to normal. If all goes well, you'll likely never have a surprise party of gift purchase spoiled again.
