Safari 4's Messy Trail

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.

Oh that Apple

[wampus]

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

At least it is not windows temp

[linzeal]

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.

Re:Safari does clean up after itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but that last 32k is the EVIL 32k

Re:Oh expoitable

[EvilIdler]

Wow, that's the most paranoid thing I've read all day, and I've read at least two Slashdot articles!

Re:Safari does clean up after itself.

[monktus]

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

Oh well...

[PopeRatzo]

...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?

Re:Safari does clean up after itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you had something interesting to say, but it seems you don't know how to coherently convert thoughts into English [encycloped...matica.com].

Re:Advert co-incidence

[Silas is back]

Keywords:
Did, not, get, joke

Re:Safari does clean up after itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously messed up. On my machine:

before: 737M -Caches- after: 815M -Caches-

Re:Safari does clean up after itself.

[belrick]

Yes but that last 32k is the EVIL 32k

You mean each of the evil bits left over from the 129 MB of data?

Re:Oh expoitable

[Anonymous Coward]

I have nothing to hide. Suicide Girls is art, right?

Re:Safari does clean up after itself.

[CarpetShark]

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

Unless you're called Bill, in which case you'll want around 640k of evil.