How To Stop Chrome from Recording Your History

I personally am guilty of using Google Chrome a lot. I not only use it for web surfing, but also to open my offline webpages and HTML files. Sure, there is the incognito feature, but Google doesn't offer to launch Chrome into incognito mode by default, so I always have to clear my history once in a while.

History takes actually quite some space on the drive, too.

But there's a way to prevent Chrome from recording any history at all, even without going incognito.

www.tekrevue.com...

there’s a trick we can use to prevent browsing history from being recorded in Chrome. Here’s how.(...)

Clear Browsing Data, make sure the box “Clear Browsing History” is checked, and then select “from the beginning of time” from the drop-down menu. Press the Clear Browsing Data button at the bottom of the window to complete the process. (...)

quit Chrome to prevent any conflicts, and then find Chrome’s history file. In OS X, this file is stored at the following location:
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
In Windows, it’s:
C:Users[User Name]AppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataDefault (...)

you’ll find a file called “History” with no file extension. This is the file we need to lock. In OS X, right click on the file and choose Get Info (or highlight the file and press Command-I). Under “General,” check the box for Locked. This will prevent Chrome from modifying this file and thus stop any future browsing history from being recorded.
For Windows, right click on the History file and choose Properties. In the Properties window, check the box for Read-Only and then press Apply.

That's all. I tried it, it actually works indeed.

So, just a neat trick I wanted to share.

i bet those *ATS edits* at google still record your stuff

I mean you might go to a hate site and need to be punished, look at an offensive picture and need to be punished, or laugh at the wrong meme and need to be punished

a reply to: SocratesJohnson

Perhaps. I do know that if I happened to be logged into gmail or youtube as I'd browse the internet, my activity was recorded in my account. I don't know if it still does, it's been a long time I haven't logged back into google services.

originally posted by: SocratesJohnson
i bet those *ATS edits* at google still record your stuff

I mean you might go to a hate site and need to be punished, look at an offensive picture and need to be punished, or laugh at the wrong meme and need to be punished

Wow that was insightful, thanks..

@OP I will try this after work tonight, I always Google chrome. But at the same time, don't give a poo what the CIA, Google or any other affiliate think about what I'm into.

I have a phone number, if they have something wrong with what I read and surf into, hit me up to hear me hang up

a reply to: Elementalist

Clearing my history actually helped me save space on my drive (your history file can reach literally Gigabytes sizes), and to make sure my browser stayed unbiased as I tested my HTML files.

a reply to: swanne

I expect Google stores everything by IP too so whilst they might not have our specific identities (log-ins, account names etc), they'll have all the searches and activities associated with IPs that use Google services. This paranoid suspicion is borne out by the google alerts we receive whenever we log-in via new devices on new IPs.

I reckon you could use a clean PC and wipe all history throughout every session. Just one log-in on that IP will probably add an ID tag to the associated data.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Yup. I second that.

a reply to: swanne

We might as well assume that someone, somewhere is storing whatever we do online whether it's VPNs, google, NSA, China, GCHQ and more than I care to list.

I use a VPN that claims to store nothing and it's only their word. Honey pots and examples like the NSA tapping Google mainlines makes it a naive belief to think anyone can go *anonymous.*

You and I know there are ways to seriously reduce the ability to track activity. On the other hand, browsers that have no recognisable identities stand out more because they'll number in the 1000s rather than in the millions.

Ain't no hiding.

I'm positive your activity online is being recorded by the DNS servers you use. Anyways, for GNOME desktops on Linux systems (I'm not sure about KDE or other desktop managers). The History file is in ~/.config/google-chrome/Default and labeled History with no extension.

Clear browser data and in terminal go to that folder and rm History and type touch History and then chattr +i History. This will lock that particular file down from being edited, deleted, etc.. I've done this and chrome seems to be functioning just fine.

Other than this I suggest changing your DNS servers to use FreeDNS or OpenDNS or anything other than google or your Internet service providers default DNS servers. Not full proof but hey every little bit helps.

a reply to: swanne

How To Stop Chrome from Recording Your History

Don't use Chrome.

a reply to: Wide-Eyes

But aren't other browsers now based on Chrome???

Umm, your browsing history, that being google searches, youtube videos watched etc, are stored in your online presence. Cleaning your browser only clears what you have.

If you have a google account, you can disable it. So they say.

But this is nothing more than preventing websites from storing your visits, most of which are required for some things. Things that you take for granted, and locking your history file will only make using the net a problematic experience for you... But by all means..

be a lot safer to just use a virtualbox and restore it to the time of install, if you're that paranoid.

Or turn everything off and forget the internet exists.... ?

a reply to: badw0lf

I use a live Ubuntu disc to run Tor through a VPN in a virtual sandbox through a mobile data hot-spot on an unregistered iPhone. Yeah sure, some people might say I'm a bit reckless and should take security more seriously.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Ideally, you should use two iphones, one set up with a wifi hotspot (probably need to jail break it first) and the other tethered to it, in another city, using wifi repeaters, just to be sure.

That will skew the triangulation of where the originating signal comes from, so you can look up even more dastardly things and use facebook.

I had to set up 4 facebook accounts just so that if I forgot my first account, I could use 3 of them to reset my password. And I still see aunt Betty in my "people you may know" list

originally posted by: badw0lf

But this is nothing more than preventing websites from storing your visits, most of which are required for some things. Things that you take for granted, and locking your history file will only make using the net a problematic experience for you...

True, however we must be careful to avoid confusing history with cookies.

Most websites use cookies for session memory and even for carts. They don't use history. The reason for that is because there is no way for HTML or JavaScript to read your History - it's forbidden for security reasons, just like it's forbidden for HTML/JavaScript to affect the content of a page on another domain name. Cookies in the other hand are not forbidden, as they are simply little files that are downloaded in your drive so that the website you visit know it's you (a bit like a train ticket, or more modernly, a ticket for a heavy metal concert show). Cookies are not affected by the security limitations, because they don't actually read anything personal from you, they only read what the website wrote into them.

Yet there are severe restrictions on what can be written into cookies, and the law can actually prosecute malicious cookie programming.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

I'm not sure tbh. I uuse Puffin.