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Ask HN: Do you delete your browsing history?
I'm torn on this. Not infrequently, some random page I saw months ago will come to mind, and I'll use browser history to find it. More infrequently, I'll go even further back than that. And just for posterity, I enjoy having it all accessible.
That said, it also makes me a bit nervous having it all there, especially synced to my Firefox account, for some hypothetical hacker, or discovery process, or who knows what.
Got me thinking, I wouldn't be surprised if HN is as split between history savers and deleters as I am internally. Curious how you all handle it.
- eahm 2mo agoNot just the history, I personally delete everything every time I close the browser, if something is worth saving I bookmark it or I make a .txt in Documents for later review. Also I pretty much don't login anywhere anyway.
- tempestn 2mo agoI also explicitly save stuff I plan to use later, but you can't always predict that in advance.
- eahm 2mo agoIf you can't predict what isn't worth saving it means it wasn't worth saving. I login and use it a little different for work but I separate sessions and leave them open longer until I'm done and still everything clears when I close, sometimes I remove the checkbox but I clear at the end of the day.
- sixthDot 2mo agoYes, every two days or so. An hygiene measure to prevent "history detection attacks". The routine consists into deleting everywith but the passwords. Actually "chrome://settings/clearBrowserData" is even in my fav bar.
- bluebic 2mo agoI delete kewkies from time to time :> Ahem. Sometimes I clear cache and cookies, ye. But you said > browser history So. Let. Me. Tell. You. This. Why in the F-CK do some browsers like Opera seem to not have functioning History? What I mean is... you go to a site, say poopshit dot com. You compulsively impulsively whatever go to your nervous tick ridiculous habit site that just happens automatically before you're even aware of what you're doing like a monkey drinking nectar from a sippy thing in a lab, and then you go "Oh wait. What was that site I was on before? I think it was Poop Shit Dot Com" You click History - literally a first class menu item they are bragging about a feature that doesn't even work. You click History. It expands. Guess what's not there? The F7IOP7^$35345MO mf'iing god damn site you just went to is not on the list ! Upsets me mildly.
- muzani 2mo agoI keep all of it, and go to incognito mode for anything I don't want saved. No, not porn. But things like searching for a book because it annoys the hell out of me when FB/Amazon/random blogs start recommending that book 11 times because I looked at it once on Amazon.
- cm2012 2mo agoNo because its too convenient to have everything auto-fill.
- dieselgate 2mo agoI do not believe it's mutually exclusive from my usage on Fire/Water-fox
- cm2012 2mo agoIncluding URLs? Like typing "n" and news.ycombinator.com auto filling?
- dieselgate 2mo agoIIRC there are check boxes to configure what should be deleted but I configure cookies/cache to not persist. Not sure where "secure" auto-generated passwords are saved i.e. on mac keychain or browser-based There're a lot of controls and I use at least 4 browsers so take the above with a grain of salt, try it and see if it works for you?
- tempestn 2mo agoWe're talking about browsing history, not cookies and cache.
- duohuo888 2mo agonever
- rationalist 2mo agoI use temporary containers (addon in Firefox) and keep my history locally.
- Specled 2mo agoSometimes I clear the cache
- fsuts 2mo agoI use Tor (with no scripts addon) for casual browsing, closing it down regularly to clear it. Then a mainstream browser for anything I leave logged in like email. And Firefox with clear everything on exit setting for the occasional site blocked on Tor. Use Tor people!