If I had private browsing on and have forgotten a login and password, is there any possible way to dig that back out of my computer or is it gone forever?

Is “Private Browsing” to be used basically any time you are doing a bank card payment or checking on your bank or investment accounts? Can you think of any other times it would be appropriate? Thank you for all these helpful tips.

@Nathan, if private browsing was on, you indeed will not have access to your password. Even were it not, you still may not be able to get to it.

Every site I am aware of, allows you to get your password, either by email, or by answering a set of questions. If you want to reply back here with the web address (URL) of the site, I can certainly see what I can do to help you out.

@Julius, I do not use private browsing even when on my banking site. Banking sites tend to be rather protective, and will even auto log you out after a certain period of browser inactivity.

That being said, I have never seen one harmed by being overly cautious on the web.

Private browsing is more an issue of personal security. It will not help you keep your data secure from someone remotely hacking your bank site, or anyone doing anything remote.

Private browsing will prevent those with physical access to your computer, from being able to snoop around and find where and what you have been up to.

Private Browsing is for erasing your trails and covering your tracks. This is primarily used for making you feel more secure about what browsing remnants are left on your system.
Also, very handy if you have multiple users on the machine (using the same log-in).
Not a feature I use personally as you have to reenter your user ID and passwords on all your sites every time you log in again.

I use it so that people dont know that I watch Flavor of Love!

@Boston, shame on you, then again, I guess I am one to talk with looking forward to this Paris Hilton BFF show

Why is Google cookie get thru when Safari:Security is set ot “Never” ??

@Hmmdude, what are you trying to accomplish my forcing cookies to not be allowed? I would estimate you can not login to almost all websites out there. I am curious what risks you will be mitigating by the turning off of accepting cookies.

I suspect, in your case, you will need to quit and restart safari, for the changes to take full effect of sites you have already navigated to.

Thanks for the quick response.

Restart didn’t work. Other ideas please.

Can u use private browsing when your on ebay paying for something on paypal?

@Misato, yes, while in private browsing, Safari will work as a normal non private session. Everything will be the same, it will save cookies, allow you to login to sites, and in your case, even allow you to use paypal.

In essence, there is no difference with private browsing, as normal browsing. The only change happens when you disable private browsing. At that point, Safari will delete whatever data it has collected about you during your private browsing.

I am an IT Manager at a primary school, one of my colleagues was suspected to have been on inappropriate sites, etc, at home on their school MacBook, they have (from what I can see) done a “Erase Free Space” and cleared all their cache and reset safari (as they knew we were onto them) – is there any way I can retrieve the data, or any program I can get to examine their hard drive?

Thanks

@Evan If the user deleted the data, and then erased the free space, the chances of getting that data that was erased are slim.

I would suggest that all use of this computer be stopped. The only chances you have of recovering any data will be dependent on no new data having the chance of sitting on top of the spots in which the old data was located at.

You will need to either connect the machine in FireWire target mode, so you can access the drive as a remove volume, or pull the drive out and put it in another machine in the event it does not have firewire.

Were backups made? Perhaps you can look at that backup data?

From there, you would look into the preference and cache files area for all browsers you suspect were used. You may find cookie files, favicon files, or other data that is often overlooked when clearing a cache.

More than likely, the favicon files, and possibly even the top sites previews if a new version of Safari, still exist. While a favicon is very small in size, you can compare its md5 to that of the suspected sites, and be confident that site was visited.

If you would like, you can email me directly, and I can possibly work out a way in which to help you. At this point, the best suggestion I can make it to turn off the machine, and not turn it on for any reason until you have a plan for accessing the data remotely.

any way to require a password to be entered when enabling PB?

@Troy, what is PB? Popup Blocker? No, there is no way to require a password when enabling it. What is your line of thinking here, why would you want to require a password to enable a feature that is more or less mandatory to use the web these days?

No, I was referring to Private Browsing (PB). I want to create a situation where if you click on PB, it will ask you for a password BEFORE enabling it.

Info: Running OX X 10.6.1.

@troy, I am not aware of any way to set a password for Private Browsing.

I am considering giving my laptop to a family member, and I know about the empty securely feature in the trash bin, and I am also aware of erasing any free space on the hard drive through disk utility. While I am not doing anything illegal, I like having piece of mind when my financial investments and medical history is at stake. I would like to do a seven pass erase on my browser history before giving it to my relative. Is there an easy way of doing this?

Also as a side note, when i remove cookies, it seems like even when I do not go back to those sites, they may appear again, am I just being forgetful, or are they reappearing after I have removed them?

William,
I would probably approach this different. The 7 pass erase is really not needed. I can not find the link at this time, but there has been a long running contest where a drive was given a few text files, then simply reformatted. The idea is, you win a prize if you can recover the files. To date, and it has been years, no one has.

Erase free space will be more than enough, in my strong opinion, to keep you safe.

However, what you are not considering, is all the places you have data and preferences that you may not be aware of.

There are two ways to pass a computer off to someone, in order of quality:

1) Use the original DVD that came with the computer, reformat the drive, and install the OS clean and new.

2) Create a new account, as an admin account, login to that account, and delete your old account. This will delete all the files that you had no matter where they are hidden. From there, you can do the erase free space if you feel you need to, though the reality is, it probably is not that needed. Certainly is not going to hurt, other than you time to wait on it to finish erasing.

For the cookies, it could be that you have some bookmarks that are RSS driven, those poll the site very 15 minutes or so, depending on your RSS preferences. When that happens, a number of cookies will generally be set.

Thank you for the speed at which you answered. Your response was very helpful. I will take one of those routes, and I will sleep soundly knowing my nephew who wants to work in programming isn’t getting his hands where they shouldn’t be.

Hi there, I have had tradesmen working in the house for the last few days. My computer has been left out when I go to work, not turned off but closed down and in its case. So if someone opens it it will turn straight on and not need a password to open up. I got home last night and the computer lead had been unplugged at the wall, and the case was closed differently to how i left it. I went to the browser history and it had been cleared. Now because I had tradesmen in the house during the day, I had left my computer on private Browsing, because I had been doing confidential financial work at home in the evenings these last few days. Here’s my query – am I being paranoid that someone has been using y computer? Is it possible for Safari to clear the browserhistroy itself if it is left in private Mode for a few days? I suspect that someone has taken it out, used it for purposes that they shouldn’t, and cleared the browser histroy to cover that up.. Whereas all they have done is shown that someone has gone into my computer? Also they have deleted my browser history which I like to refer to from time to time. Would value your opinion on this

many thanks

Paul

@Paul, Yes, Safari can and will clear a browser history, but not all of it. It is set to expire history items after a certain date. So perhaps expire after 1 week, but that only shaves off the items that are older than one week, leaving all the most recent ones for you.

The nice thing is, just clearing the history does not always clear everything. Though being in private browsing mode may make this behave different.

There is a cookies file, favicon file, top sites, page preview, cache, and local database storage, that will all hold traces of where the browser has been. These generally do not get cleared unless you hit the “Reset Safari” menu item.

My gut says, that if the computer was in a different position, that could have happened by nature of people working in your home, nothing too out of the ordinary there. However, the history clearing is very suspect.

Then again, keep in mind, there are conditions in which the history can possibly clear itself in full, it just depends on how much time has gone by and how much of that time the browser was not in use.

Through some investigation you could find the files and see where the browser has been, just depends how much time you want to invest in this. I may be inclined to set up Safari so it is in a slightly off screen position so if someone were to use it, they would move the window to be on screen. I doubt they would remember to put it back.

Do you happen to have Time Machine backups? If you do, there is a chance that the files that were cleared were backed up before they were cleared, and you could restore them, seeing where the browser has been.