Can I make Firefox 3.5 ignore my visits to certain domains?

July 22, 2009 12:19 PM

Can I make Firefox 3.5 never remember history (but still save cookies and cache pages) for certain domains automatically but remember history normally for everything else?

Basically I'm looking for a seamless and automatic way for Firefox 3.5 to simply not save history information when I am browsing on certain domains that I specify, but act normally on all others. For example, if I could enter a domain filter like *.facebook.com*, it would never save any history info from Facebook, any Facebook subdomains, or any Facebook pages. However, I don't want it to affect cookies or caching. Is there an extension or a hack I can do to make this happen?

posted by joshrholloway to computers & internet (9 comments total)

The History Block addon has a lot of the functionality you want, but it doesn't save cookies or cache pages.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 12:25 PM on July 22 [2 favorites has favorites]

That looks like it might work. There is apparently a hack to that extension to retain cookies, and apparently the extension author is going to officially add this feature in the near future.

Any other solutions would still be appreciated.
posted by joshrholloway at 12:30 PM on July 22

There is a manual solution: begin typing the domain in the URL area, then when the autocomplete drop-down box showing the list of visited URLs for that domain appears, tab down to it and hold down shift-delete to delete them all. That removes them from the history but doesn't affect cookies or caching.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:56 PM on July 22

Right, but I don't want to have to do it manually each time, I want it to automatically never keep a history for those certain domains in the first place.
posted by joshrholloway at 1:04 PM on July 22

why not just hit ctrl-shift-p to enter private browsing mode?
posted by zeoslap at 1:27 PM on July 22

That seems to put the browser in sort of a "sandbox" mode, which doesn't carry over cookies or caches from regular browsing mode, and I think it even disables extensions. Plus, again, I just want it to be automatic. I realize a keyboard shortcut does not take that much effort, but I don't even want to have to stop to think about it.
posted by joshrholloway at 1:38 PM on July 22

http://email.about.com/od/staysecureandprivate/qt/et_clear_ff.htm - There's an option to have Firefox clear data on exit. You can uncheck cookies and cache. (use CTRL-SHIFT-DEL to bring up the menu now.)

TLDR version: Tools -> Options -> Privacy Drop Down -> Use Custom
posted by Nauip at 4:59 PM on July 22

That will remove everything. The OP wants to remove only certain domains.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:27 PM on July 22

Another approach would be to create a separate profile using the firefox.exe -profilemanager command line option. Then you could activate it using Start | Run or a shortcut wherever you like (start menu, desktop, etc.). This other profile could be the only one used to access certain domains, and could use one of the universal controls listed above, without affecting anything in the everyday profile.

Be warned that if it's saving cookies or caching, information about the browsing could still be obtained by someone using some pretty basic (even default) OS searches.
posted by dhartung at 8:34 AM on July 23