Have you ever wondered how seriously “private” is the private browsing option on your browser? Well researchers
from the Stanford University have found out that the private browsing option is not really private like the name suggests but inface a whole lot of information can be retrieved from the browser running in private browsing mode.
Different modes are available in popular browsers. Some of them are “InPrivate Browsing” in Internet Explorer, “Incognito mode” in Chrome, and “Private Browsing” in Firefox. The whole point of having “private browsing” is to make it impossible for other users using the same computer to get the history of the sites that were browsed earlier.
This is done by the browsers which avoid or discard any history entries, cached items. The browsers also have to prevent the sites from being able to track visitors and they do this by not sending cookies and other information when in private mode.
Stanford researchers found that the browsers’ securities were not perfect. It was found that the browsers did not really secure the information for private sessions and cleverly built sites could still trace visitors. A paper is to be presented over this issue next week at the USENIX security conference.
The research also found that plugin and add on extensions actually weakened the security aspect of the browser. The plugins can store data by themselves even in private mode as the browser usually does not have control over a third-party plugin.
Well everything they say that is private is not really private, eh!
You can set private browsing in Internet by pressing “ctrl+shift+p” or going to Tools -> Inprivate browsing
In Firefox you may go to Tools -> Start Private Browsing option or by pressing “ctrl+shift+p” to get the same.
ommak