4 ms·

that seems a little naive. what about actual evidence of performing said wipe? a little progress bar showing the 35× overwrite technique maybe, verified by a fa

that seems a little naive. what about actual evidence of performing said wipe? a little progress bar showing the 35× overwrite technique maybe, verified by a failed recovery. do any browsers have these small, open source capabilities baked in? seems like nowadays the only way to ensure and audit personal privacy is by having network inspection and disk utilities constantly monitoring these "pro-privacy" apps

boomboomsubban 6y ago
Store browsing data in memory. That said, data being available to forensic level HD recovery is very different from data still being used to populate the most visited sites.
- 867-5309 6y ago
  storing in memory would only provide browsing data for the current session, permanent storage of history is not possible without writing to disk
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    That would provide fairly strong evidence that it was actually being deleted.
    - 867-5309 6y ago
      if what you are referring to were possible
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        It's not really hard, you just want a system that let's you save your history through a reboot.
        867-5309 6y ago
        even if the browser's storage engine was part of a RAMdisk for each session, such an area would still have to reside in hard disk storage to survive a reboot
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        Needing to survive a reboot isn't necessary. This system would let you know that nothing is being saved. It's not perfect, but it does that thing very well.
        867-5309 6y ago
        it is necessary in relation to the original topic of browser history
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        >seems like nowadays the only way to ensure and audit personal privacy is by... Storing the history in memory also solves this half of this problem, and surviving a reboot is not necessary to ensure and audit privacy. edit I'll stop. I can understand the flaws in this setup, I don't understand why you think it isn't possible/wouldn't solve the problem.
        867-5309 6y ago
        you cannot store the history in memory and survive a reboot, unless you write the memory to disk, then read into memory from disk on boot, but even then the history is being stored on disk and so is recoverable. surviving a reboot is necessary since the point of storing history is to make it accessible later, otherwise you would use incog/private mode, or stronger. I don't know what it is you think I don't think is possible
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
gruez 6y ago
>that seems a little naive. what about actual evidence of performing said wipe? a little progress bar showing the 35× overwrite technique maybe, verified by a failed recovery Implementing this is problematic because depending on the filesystem, it might not be possible to "wipe" a file by repeatedly writing over it. For instance, if it's a log structured filesystem. On the other hand, you might not even need to overwrite in some cases, eg. filesystems on SSDs with trim support. Also you don't need 35x overwrites. There's no evidence that even 1x overwrite can be recovered on contemporary hard drives.

boomboomsubban 6y ago

Store browsing data in memory. That said, data being available to forensic level HD recovery is very different from data still being used to populate the most visited sites.

867-5309 6y ago
storing in memory would only provide browsing data for the current session, permanent storage of history is not possible without writing to disk
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  That would provide fairly strong evidence that it was actually being deleted.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    if what you are referring to were possible
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      It's not really hard, you just want a system that let's you save your history through a reboot.
      - 867-5309 6y ago
        even if the browser's storage engine was part of a RAMdisk for each session, such an area would still have to reside in hard disk storage to survive a reboot
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        Needing to survive a reboot isn't necessary. This system would let you know that nothing is being saved. It's not perfect, but it does that thing very well.
        867-5309 6y ago
        it is necessary in relation to the original topic of browser history
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        >seems like nowadays the only way to ensure and audit personal privacy is by... Storing the history in memory also solves this half of this problem, and surviving a reboot is not necessary to ensure and audit privacy. edit I'll stop. I can understand the flaws in this setup, I don't understand why you think it isn't possible/wouldn't solve the problem.
        867-5309 6y ago
        you cannot store the history in memory and survive a reboot, unless you write the memory to disk, then read into memory from disk on boot, but even then the history is being stored on disk and so is recoverable. surviving a reboot is necessary since the point of storing history is to make it accessible later, otherwise you would use incog/private mode, or stronger. I don't know what it is you think I don't think is possible
        boomboomsubban 6y ago

gruez 6y ago

>that seems a little naive. what about actual evidence of performing said wipe? a little progress bar showing the 35× overwrite technique maybe, verified by a failed recovery Implementing this is problematic because depending on the filesystem, it might not be possible to "wipe" a file by repeatedly writing over it. For instance, if it's a log structured filesystem. On the other hand, you might not even need to overwrite in some cases, eg. filesystems on SSDs with trim support. Also you don't need 35x overwrites. There's no evidence that even 1x overwrite can be recovered on contemporary hard drives.