A few people (e.g. Varun) told me my previous post differed from the way how google chrome / Microsoft IE8 handle Incognito (Private Browsing) mode. The main consideration was that while chrome/IE8 don’t write anything to disk at all, the firefox method is an after-effect, i.e., writing to disk and then clearing it up while closing the window. Well, true but nothing is non-rectificable 
. So this is a post about a method that one can use to go “really” undercover with firefox. But before we begin, please make sure you have read Part 1 of my post, because here I’ll start from the point where we left off in the earlier post.
I began thinking on the lines of setting up a ramdisk first (and remapping the browser cache folders to the new path in this ramdisk), so that nothing gets written to the hard disk, ever, even if the browser tries very hard. Best security right? Yes, but it involved a few issues like data is still there until you reboot also a part of your ram is always blocked, etc. So I went with the approach given below.
Method: Easier and privacy on-par with Chrome/IE8
Just do the following in addition to the Step 4.
- Uncheck “Keep my history”
- Uncheck “Remember what I enter in forms and the search bar”
- Uncheck “Remember what I’ve downloaded”
- Choose “Keep until I close firefox” for cookies
- Press advanced settings in “Private Data”, select unselect options according to your choice. For max protection, select everything.
- Open a new tab, and write “about:config” (without quotes) in address bar, press enter.
- Search for “browser.cache.disk.enable” and set it to false
- Search for “browser.cache.offline.enable” and set it to false
Done. You are secure and remember, this is just a one time setup, you won’t have to do this again and again.
Side Note: Usability is another concern. However, I think that is debatable and varies from user to user highly. The steps lined up in these 2 posts aren’t too hard to carry out and take around a minute to do, and is a one time effort. Now, compare this with option where you use google chrome and love its in-built incognito mode but then have to leave all the extensions and greasemonkey scripts of firefox behind which made browsing so much more accessible for you. Another path could be to use both the browsers. Anyways, I’ll not go further down this path. This is for you to decide what you feel is more usable for you . This is just something to say “It’s not impossible”.
PS: If anyone is still curious about the ramdisk approach, let me know..
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I agree with you on the extensions part. That is why I still use Firefox about 20% of the time. I do miss some extensions such as Better GReader, Web Developer, Delicious buttons, AdBlock Plus etc. But that’s just a matter of time, isn’t it?
You know what would be better than a ramdisk solution – a portable USB-based browser
http://portableapps.com/
Did you take Google Chrome out for spin? I find it lighter than Firefox (or IE) and I love the way it uses screen space.
Yes, extensions is a matter of time only. Its too early to judge chrome right now..
…) but now I’m so lazy to switch things around..even took 3 months to switch to FF3 from FF2..
Portable browser might not be the answer, what if usb drive drops out of your pocket (unless it is configured by default to have the settings listed in this post, that is not to save anything onto disk)
But abt chrome, didn’t use it till now..Don’t use windows at home…Some times I wonder how I have changed. Till just abt an year back, I _HAD_ to try everything as soon as it came out (or even before…*leaks*
Browser Wars 2.0: Firefox scrambles to add ‘private mode’ browsing
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1893
I am pretty sure Opera can be easily set up too.
Also, it have had the kiosk mode for many years.
I had a couple thoughts, if you use PortableApps and want it secure, you just have to either get a password protected one, or encrypt the folder containing firefox. Also it may be possible to use the thumb drive with the RAM disk approach and maybe even combine it with encryption.
Also you could use a Bio-Protection system, if you really want security. ;}
I don’t know what setting the “browser.cache.xxx.xxx” to false did, but it seems somewhat self-explanatory. If that is the case, then why do we even need to turn off all of the options in the privacy menu?
@skatersev: The browser.cache.xx options do not take care of things like cookies, browsing history, search bar, form contents, etc..
How to open two firefox windows of different profiles at the same time? In my case, once I open firefox with the default profile, later on no matter what profile I specify firefox just insists working as in default profile.
My bad, should have specified “-no-remote”.
From google’s own chrome faqs…
“In incognito mode …. It will also not store snapshots of pages that you visit or keep a record of your downloads. (This information could still be stored elsewhere on your computer, though.)”.
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Now simply press ctrl+shift+p