1

As they clearly state in their website they mention that

What does Private Browsing not save?

  • Visited pages: No pages will be added to the list of sites in the History menu, the Library window's history list, or the Awesome Bar address list.
  • Cached Web Content and Offline Web Content and User Data: No temporary Internet files (cached files) or files that websites save for offline use will be saved.

Considering this Scenario

If I open a tab in incognito Mode as per below screenshot. enter image description here

After I close the tab It gives me an option to Undo Close Tab and If I click on it,This restores the tab which I closed.! enter image description here

So Does this mean that this statement is untrue? Cached Web Content and Offline Web Content and User Data: No temporary Internet files (cached files) or files that websites save for offline use will be saved

Further research regarding this
I opened the about:config from Firefox and I filtered browser.sessionstore.and I'm setting the following preferences as follows,and now closed tab will no longer will be able to perform undo

  • browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo;0
  • browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo;0

enter image description here

According to Firefox

The saved session data is also cleared upon receiving the "browser:purge-session-history" notification.

The data is stored on disk as a serialized javascript data structure (though it's possible that it will be converted to JSON once that becomes natively supported by Gecko/Spidermonkey)

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  • 5
    I would be willing to bet that the entire tab object is saved in memory until the browser is closed. This wouldn't be on disk, but if the user chooses "undo" it can be restored. – RoraΖ Mar 21 '15 at 10:01
  • Firefox isn't Chrome - different tabs are not different processes. There's no guarantee that every individual private tab is separate; the guarantee applies to the session as a whole (just like all browsers support the back button in incognito) – cpast Mar 21 '15 at 15:55
  • @raz. Unfortunately that is not true.Did bit of research regarding this and edited my question – Pathum Anjana Mar 21 '15 at 16:30
  • @PathumAnjana Close all private tabs and windows and open again. Can you undo close tabs to bring up the previous session? – muru Mar 21 '15 at 17:22
  • @muru No,I'm aware that everything is erased when I close the browser – Pathum Anjana Mar 21 '15 at 17:27
3

The statement is not untrue but IS possibly misleading.

Certainly files are in fact cached while the in-private session is active, they are then cleared at the end. Of course, we all know this could leave a footprint.

In-private sessions are not really meant to prevent someone from discovering a footprint but more to prevent inadvertent "bleed" between sessions.

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  • I can agree with your answer ;) – Pathum Anjana Mar 23 '15 at 15:28

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