There has been a lot of fud lately about the privacy of your browser-history. JavaScript can detect which URL’s you have visited and act accordingly. This can range from a useful script to only show the social networks you actually use, or a site that lists your history. However, nothing is stopping the JavaScript to “call home” with this information.

I too was a bit worried about this potential privacy breach. Obviously there are several solutions and workarounds:

  • Systematically clear your browser history
  • Use a sort of private browsing mode
  • For Firefox: Disable layout.css.visited_links_enabled in about:config. This completely disables visited-links, so you won’t be able to see which sites you’ve visited
  • For ancient Firefox 2.0: SafeHistory extension