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how do I prevent snooping of browser history by a web site?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by mykstor

DESecor
DESecor
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I just finished an article by Jordan Roberston, that talks about web sites snooping through the browser's retained history. First of all I didn't think that this was possible. But if it is possible, I'd like to prevent it from occurring.

I just finished an article by Jordan Roberston, that talks about web sites snooping through the browser's retained history. First of all I didn't think that this was possible. But if it is possible, I'd like to prevent it from occurring.

All Replies (3)

TonyE
TonyE
  • Moderator
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This is fixed in the Firefox 4 beta builds, the latest version is available from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/beta/

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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See also http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-css-history-leak/

You can set the pref layout.css.visited_links_enabled to false on the about:config page to prevent websites from sniffing the history.

This will make visited links and unvisited links show the same, so you can no longer distinguish them and websites can not use that to see if you have visited a website before.

mykstor
mykstor
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I'm amazed that more users aren't concerned about snooping. There are hundreds of companies offering services to advertisers to data mine user's computers. Among them both Google and Microsoft.

Wake up, people!