History Sniffing In the Wild

[lotuseclat79]

History Sniffing In the Wild (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/03/1419200/History-Sniffing-In-the-Wild?from=rss).

PDF download link: An Empirical Study of Privacy-Violating Information Flows
in JavaScript Web Applications (http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~d1jang/papers/ccs10.pdf) (437.1 KB)

-- Tom

[Dogbiscuit]

Thanks.

[markedmanner]

2 easy ways to defend against this...

1. Keep no website history

2. If you do keep website history in firefox enter about:config and edit layout.css.visited_links_enabled to FALSE

[Boyfriend]

How to disable history in Google Chrome?

[Warlockz]

Another way to defend against it for Firefox and Internet Explorer users

ABINE (http://www.abine.com/)
http://www.abine.com/

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Also these other Addons For Firefox (https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html) like BetterPrivacy (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/), Privacy Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/14217/), PrivacyChoice Opt-out (http://www.privacychoice.org/choose), Adblock Plus (http://adblockplus.org/en/), and NoScript (http://noscript.net/), will help you protect your privacy.

...................................................................................

[Warlockz]

-{ Quote: "How to disable history in Google Chrome?" }-

http://www.google.com/search?q=How+to+disable+history+in+Google+Chrome

http://www.mychromeaddons.com/category/chrome-addons/

[lotuseclat79]

Wired.com and Huffington Post Amongst List of Privacy-Invading Websites (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26098/)

-{ Quote: "Behavior and history-sniffing websites know what you copy, click, and rollover, and even which of their competitors you're visiting." }-

I protect both my history and cache with a couple of add-ons from Stanford aka safecache and safehistory. There is a post I made explaining how to edit the version so that they both can work in Firefox 3.6.12 - just search for posts by my account name +SafeHistory. The post may be in the Unix forum, but I don't recall, so search the privacy forums, other security issues & news, and the unix forum.

Note: See post #16 in the thread entitled: 'Browser' Fingerprinting (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=272881&highlight=SafeHistory) for more information.

-- Tom

[Ocky]

Hi, tom,

-{ Quote: "Wired.com and Huffington Post Amongst List of Privacy-Invading Websites (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26098/)



I protect both my history and cache with a couple of add-ons from Stanford aka safecache and safehistory. There is a post I made explaining how to edit the version so that they both can work in Firefox 3.6.12 - just search for posts by my account name +SafeHistory. The post may be in the Unix forum, but I don't recall, so search the privacy forums, other security issues & news, and the unix forum.

Note: See post #16 in the thread entitled: 'Browser' Fingerprinting (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=272881&highlight=SafeHistory) for more information.

-- Tom" }-
Downloaded from mozilla addons, and did it as described in the first review viz:
-{ Quote: "This plugin is just amazing!
And it works under FF 3.6 with the following trick: Download the .xpi file with Internet Explorer:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/latest/1502/addon-1502-latest.xpi?src=addondetail
Rename it to .zip and open the zip-File. Delete the folder "META-INF" and open the file "install.rdf" with a text editor. Change the line 2.0.0.* to 3.6.*
Save the file and put it in the .zip archiv. Rename the .zip file to .xpi again and open it with Firefox. It asks you to install the addon and you are done.
The addon works smoothly with FF 3.6.3 by the way ;)" }-

It's ticked enabled in FF preferences but absolutely no history is shown. That is surely not what is intended. ? Also what about the "META-INF" should it be deleted or not ?

Thanks for drawing this add on to my attention. Whether i will use it depends on whether I can find out how it should ideally work. :argh:

(changed line to 3.7.*)

[lotuseclat79]

Hi Ocky,

I assume when you say it is ticked enabled in FF preferences, that you mean that you followed Tools>Add-ons>Extensions>SafeHistory and saw three buttons: Preferences, Disable, Uninstall. Is that correct? If not, where is it ticked enabled?

My Preferences are greyed out, and the other two are selectable, i.e. I am not able to select Preferences, so I would be interested to know what preferences there are.

You indicate no history is shown, but is that from the View>Sidebar>History. I show history with no problem, and I do not know what you mean that no history is shown. Remember, this is about blocking the sniffing of history by way of a website activating javascript to see where you have been, etc., so I am not sure what you mean when you say "no history is shown".

Check out the Stanford website for any documentation they may have. The SafeHistory add-on is here (http://safehistory.com/), and the website for SafeCache is here (http://www.safecache.com/).

-- Tom

[Ocky]

-{ Quote: "Hi Ocky,

I assume when you say it is ticked enabled in FF preferences, that you mean that you followed Tools>Add-ons>Extensions>SafeHistory and saw three buttons: Preferences, Disable, Uninstall. Is that correct? If not, where is it ticked enabled?" }-

Must be something I am not doing correctly, or is it NoScript ? Prefences are greyed out in Tools>Addons. I meant here..

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-{ Quote: "You indicate no history is shown, but is that from the View>Sidebar>History. I show history with no problem, and I do not know what you mean that no history is shown. Remember, this is about blocking the sniffing of history by way of a website activating javascript to see where you have been, etc., so I am not sure what you mean when you say "no history is shown".
-- Tom" }-
History is normally shown in the side panel as per sshot. However with the extension nothing is shown at all. ??? Regards.

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[inka]

-{ Quote: "Another way to defend against it for Firefox and Internet Explorer users

www. abine.com" }-Don't DL/install the addon from the abine site until/unless you've read the (mostly unfavorable) reviews posted to its addons.mozilla.com page

The consensus of 160 or so reviewers there is to AVOID the abine addon and use instead the "beef TACO" addon (a forked version)