

Defaulting to private browsing mode - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/03/defaulting-to-private-browsing-mode.html

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JoachimSchipper
Firefox 4 beta 12 (on OpenBSD) actually has a "Permanent Private Browsing
mode" checkbox on the privacy tab. So you can already do this. ;-)

That said, you may be interested in <http://panopticlick.eff.org/>, which
shows just how private private browsing is...

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rwmj
I've been doing this for about a year (not "private browsing mode"
specifically, but setting Firefox to delete all history, cookies etc when it
closes, which amounts to roughly the same).

Honestly I haven't noticed a lot of difference to my user experience, except
except every week or two I have to click the login buttons on a handful of
favourite websites. Since FF is still remembering the passwords, I don't have
to retype those.

Other useful extensions I'm using: NoScript and HTTPS-everywhere.

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mike-cardwell
This.

I don't get why browsers allow long term cookies by default. Session cookies
should be allowed by default, but "normal" cookies should be off by default.
I've had mine off for years now without any noticably bad effect on my
browsing...

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e1ven
I'm not sure how you know the difference between a session cookie and "other"
cookie from a technical level.

You could do a per-cookie approval, but that gets tedious quickly.

~~~
jrockway
A session cookie is a cookie that is sent without an explicit expiration time,
and is explicitly specified to be so in the standards.

~~~
e1ven
Sorry, you're right. Wasn't thinking properly.

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samdk
You can set up default private browsing/incognito mode if you want to. None of
the major browsers have support for doing it through the normal options GUI as
far as I know, but getting it working isn't at all hard.

In Firefox, set the "browser.privatebrowsing.autostart" about:config flag to
true.

In Chrome/Chromium, append " --incognito" when starting to open an incognito
window. Alias it or add it to your GUI shortcuts to start it that way by
default.

In IE8+, append " -private".

~~~
rsoto
Firefox has the option via the GUI, in the privacy tab, select custom settings
for history and tick the first checkbox.

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ars
You don't need to use private browsing mode for this.

Just change the various setting to not store cookies permanently, not store
history for more than 1 day, etc, etc. I assume you still want a disk cache?
Private browsing disables that, but that has a detrimental effect on your
browsing.

This is a terrible idea for most people though. Every time I go to my bank it
needs to re-authenticate me? It doesn't remember the sites I go to frequently?
I need to login again every time I go to HN?

~~~
wladimir
_Every time I go to my bank it needs to re-authenticate me? It doesn't
remember the sites I go to frequently? I need to login again every time I go
to HN?_

You can still let your browser remember your passwords. This reduces
'authenticating' to simply clicking a button. Or you could configure a
whitelist of sites that _are_ allowed to keep your cookies for a longer time.

And to 'remember' sites I go to frequently I have bookmarks (and my own
memory). Then again, browser history did save my ass multiple times. It's the
cookies that annoy me.

~~~
sapphirecat
> Or you could configure a whitelist of sites that are allowed to keep your
> cookies for a longer time.

This, I do. All cookies are session cookies except for my bank, to save their
"I use this computer a lot" cookie so I don't have to be challenged in
addition to the anti-phishing and password stage. And, I trust my own website
so that I can put 'newblog' into the awesomebar and start writing quickly.

The only problem I've had is determining _which site cookies are important._
The bank uses a 3rd-party provider for the Internet Banking Area, so their
cookies have no relation to the bank name. Once Firefox has forced a cookie to
session lifetime, it doesn't go back to being saved when you whitelist that
specific cookie's domain, which was confusing when next I visited the bank and
it had forgotten me. But after _that_ visit, it was fine.

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bajsejohannes
This is a bit extreme for my case, but I do agree there lots of good use cases
for privacy mode. My favorite one is when someone needs to borrow my computer:
Giving them a browser in privacy mode means they don't have to log out of my
gmail/facebook/etc to check theirs.

~~~
chadgeidel
I have a "guest" account set up on my computers for exactly this reason.
Windows' "fast user switching" gives me a nice way of quickly providing
someone a handy "clean" environment for them to go wild with.

Not sure what the equivalent of this is in OSX or Linux.

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retube
I agree with him on 3 of his 4 points. I want third-party cookies disabled by
default, I want forms never to remember anything and I don't want passwords
cached. But I DO want my history remembered. In fact I want every page I ever
visit automatically indexed (somewhere) that I can easily search against when
I'm trying to find some page I've previously visited. Of course, the ability
to easily remove pages from history/index though is a must ;)

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Tichy
I've had Firefox configured to behave like that for ages.

The problem is that in the meantime I have started to never close my browser
(notebook always just goes goes to sleep, no restart). So those settings
aren't as useful as they used to be anymore.

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aj700
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/phodabgmalihpnmm...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/phodabgmalihpnmmlgoplifofcdnjoll)

there's also this chrome extension, but it only blacklists, not whitelists.

