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Safari 4's Messy Trail

Posted by kdawson on from the if-disk-space-were-infinite-and-free dept.

Signum Ignitum writes "Safari 4 comes with a slew of cool new features, but extensive data generation combined with poor cleanup make for a data trail that's a privacy nightmare. Hidden files with screenshots of your history, files that point back to Web pages you've visited and cleared from your history, and thousands of XML files that track the changes in the pages in your Top Sites can add up to gigabytes of information you didn't know was kept about you." Some of Safari's bloat is kept in quite obscure locations; it takes a fairly knowledgeable user to find it and clean it up. You can avoid some of the worst of it by disabling Top Sites.

12 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Oh that Apple by wampus · · Score: 5, Funny

    I for one like it because it is so innovative and it fits in well with my hip, young lifestyle.

  2. Safari does clean up after itself. by ozzmosis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is a "Empty Cache" button under the "Safari" menu.

    Before "Empty Cache"
    ahze:/private/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++31gU+-Ev6/-Caches-/com.apple.Safari ahze$ du -sh
      129M .

    After "Empty Cache"
    ahze:/private/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++31gU+-Ev6/-Caches-/com.apple.Safari ahze$ du -sh
      32K .

    1. Re:Safari does clean up after itself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes but that last 32k is the EVIL 32k

    2. Re:Safari does clean up after itself. by monktus · · Score: 5, Funny

      32k of evil ought to be good enough for anybody.

      --
      Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
    3. Re:Safari does clean up after itself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're not seriously considering Chrome over Safari for privacy reasons?

  3. At least it is not windows temp by linzeal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Windows temp (/username/appdata/local/temp) which if not cleaned can hold every single unzipped file/torrent/etc since you installed the operating system. Just cleaned up a computer at a friend's house that was nearing 200 gigs in temp from mostly anime porn avi he downloaded and unzipped. I showed his gf some of the stuff thinking it was funny and was told to leave the house, he was not very happy either. Damn kids, lol.

    --
    An Education is the Font of All Liberty
    1. Re:At least it is not windows temp by wipeMyButt · · Score: 5, Insightful
      And this has what to do with Safari's shockingly poor behavior?

      Why is it that everyone's response to any sort of problem is "Windows is worse"? If someone described a serious flaw in say, a Prius, would your response be, "Yeah, but Honda sucks."

      I'm not trying to excuse crappy design problems in Windows, but when is Apple going to lose this untouchable luster and take it's lumps along with everyone else?

  4. Mac abstraction affects the non-savvy... by ruphus13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The big value-proposition of the Mac has been that it is easy for the non-geeky user to use. Unfortunately, things like these make those very users vulnerable. Without exposing easy ways to flush potentially sensitive and private information, it is the same users Apple attempts to serve that will be exposed. And, this will probably be the default browser for most new systems, so unless this is patched, expect the problem to proliferate...

  5. Oh expoitable by johncandale · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The real scary part of this for me is not the government, more on that in a sec, but your girlfriend/boyfriend/housemate. Anyone who feels like he/she wants to do some snooping now has a treasure chest of stuff to take out of context.

    I hope no one here is naive enough to use the "if you have nothing to hide..." line.

    Getting back to the government, most cases are not high profile law&order style procedural deals. I could easily see local lawyers taking porn sites as evidence you killed her, technology sites as evidence you were researching bombs, map sites that you were researching crimes, and I can see local judges allowing it, and local jury's believing it.

    Of course they could get most of this from ISP logs, but that would be just that much harder to get, and wouldn't come with screen shots.

  6. Oh well... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...a data trail that's a privacy nightmare...gigabytes of information you didn't know was kept about you.

    Remember those famous Apple "1984" advertisements where they're the young, free person breaking out of the crushing tyranny of Big Brother?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  7. Bullshit scaremongering. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Use "Private Browsing" mode and this junk won't get in your history in the first place for you to need to delete it. The end. Meanwhile, fulltext searching of your history is hella convenient.

  8. Re:Why would you use Safari anyway? by UnConeD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's why I use and love Safari 4 on OS X. And yes, I am a huge geek who hacks code for a living.

    • It's bloody fast, in every way. From loading speed, to rendering speed, to JavaScript execution to Canvas rendering. Firefox does not compare, and Chrome still isn't available for Mac.
    • Full-text indexing of your history + thumbnails are a life saver for finding that one blog post or article that you read 3 days ago but can't remember the URL to or find on Google (because the site's SEO sucks). Coverflowing through a set of thumbnails lets you identify specific pages really quickly if you've seen them before. It really is waaay more than just a cool effect.
    • Safari has the best web standards support and includes a bunch of awesome proposed features on top of that. Web fonts, box/text shadows (+ rounded corners), css transforms, border image, etc. It's awesome fun to develop on.
    • It is the most polished browser on OS X, by far. The scrolling is butter-smooth and feels analog (multitouch trackpad++), the form widgets feel like real Aqua, the textareas are resizable, the font rendering is the most consistent.

    For me, Safari provides the best web experience. For you, Firefox 3 is the sweet spot. Why can't you just accept that people have differing priorities and requirements, instead of smugly deriding others for using a "miserable little browser"? If you want to hate on a browser, hate on IE. At least there's demonstrable evidence of how IE has damaged the web. Us Safari users are doing just fine.