Protecting Your Data : Private Browsing by Default
With everyone complaining about laptop searches crossing the border, and an upcoming trip stateside for me, I thought I might take a look at protecting some of my own data. It’s not that i’ve got anything to hide (unless uncle sam is interested in client management software), but I like to keep my data as mine. While protecting all of your data is much more difficult than i’ll cover here, protecting at least your web surfing habits is easy as pie. Safari has a great feature called “Private Browsing” that doesn’t hold onto any cache/passwords/history from session to session in your browser. The only problem with private browsing is that you’ve got to enable it every time you open your browser.
I did some searching but couldn’t find any info on tricking safari into defaulting to private browsing. That’s why I took 5 minutes out, and wrote a quick applescript app to launch Safari, and instantly turn on private browsing. It’s simple, but it works. Give it a try!
Cheers!
August 6th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I’ve been trying to accomplish this same goal, would you mind posting your source or e-mailing it to me?
Thanks a bunch! I’d been trying to figure out a way to launch Safari without WebKitPrivateBrowsingEnabled getting set to 0 every time.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I’ve been working with macs for over nine years now, and it’s always bothered me that there is a lot of giving people fish and not enough teaching them to fish.
Your applescript app might be nice and all, but it would be much more useful and responsible to also include the code you used to workaround the issue.
At least you didn’t try to charge $5 for it like a lot of folks do.