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Ask HN: Do you delete your browsing history?

4 points by tempestn ↗ HN
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.

10 comments

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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.
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.
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.

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.
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
rationalist
I use temporary containers (addon in Firefox) and keep my history locally.
Specled
Sometimes I clear the 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!