Ask HN: Do you delete your browsing history?

[tempestn]

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]

Not 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]

I also explicitly save stuff I plan to use later, but you can't always predict that in advance.

[eahm]

If 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]

Yes, 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.

[cm2012]

No because its too convenient to have everything auto-fill.

[dieselgate]

I do not believe it's mutually exclusive from my usage on Fire/Water-fox

[cm2012]

Including URLs? Like typing "n" and news.ycombinator.com auto filling?

[dieselgate]

IIRC 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]

We're talking about browsing history, not cookies and cache.

[fsuts]

I 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!

[muzani]

I 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.

[rationalist]

I use temporary containers (addon in Firefox) and keep my history locally.

[Specled]

Sometimes I clear the cache

[bluebic]

I 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.