Unveiling a Surprising Safari 4 Beta Glitch Affecting Your Privacy
Discover a critical privacy issue in Safari 4 Beta where browsing history is stored even in Private Mode, and learn practical solutions to safeguard your data.
Web designer C. Harwick has uncovered a concerning flaw in Safari 4 Beta: despite using Private Mode, the browser continues to save your entire browsing history. The History folder accumulates records of visited websites, growing up to 100 MB within just a few months. Similarly, the Top Sites folder also stores data persistently. Additionally, the Quicklook folder contains cached website previews that, according to Harwick, are never deleted. Over time, this folder can balloon to 2 GB or even as much as 5 GB, as reported by some readers.
While Harwick's report sounds alarming, it’s important to remember this concerns a beta version where bugs are expected. To address this issue, users can disable the Top Sites feature. For instance, MacOSXTips.com recommends running the following Terminal command to turn off Top Sites: defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool FALSE. Another practical solution is using the Safari CleanUp script, which automatically clears cache, removes unwanted icons, and deletes plist files to free up space and enhance privacy.
Additional Details:
- History folder location: ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari
- Top Sites XML files location: ~/Library/PubSub/Feeds/
- Page previews folder location: /private/var/folders/et/etuAKaR1GTeV9DVeRGfst++++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.Safari/Webpage Previews/ (Note: path segment may vary)
Source: Cult of Mac
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