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Why is my cache full entries to my bookmarked sites after sorting those bookmarks

  • 3 ответа
  • 1 имеет эту проблему
  • 7 просмотров
  • Последний ответ от NoahSUMO

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Fx 3.6.3. By default, all my history, cookies & cache are always cleared on close. I launched a new session and did nothing but sort my bookmarks. I did not visit any sites.

Yet my cache was full of entries to all of the sites whose bookmarks I had sorted.

Can someone explain to me why this happens? It seems like a privacy issue to me.

This happened

Not sure how often

== I just noticed it today very randomly

Fx 3.6.3. By default, all my history, cookies & cache are always cleared on close. I launched a new session and did nothing but sort my bookmarks. I did not visit any sites. Yet my cache was full of entries to all of the sites whose bookmarks I had sorted. Can someone explain to me why this happens? It seems like a privacy issue to me. == This happened == Not sure how often == I just noticed it today very randomly

Все ответы (3)

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First of all, I find it odd you have Firefox 3.6.8 as the latest out now is 3.6.3. Maybe you modified that on your own?

Anyway what cache are you talking about? The History sidebar you mean? The actual folder that holds the history cache? Or some other location? Please be more specific.

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Hi Noah.

(I've been on holiday - my apologies for the delay in responding.)

Yes, it is a modification I made to prefs on a specific profile I use for testing projects related to internet privacy and security for a consumer privacy education nonprofit. I intentionally use this profile when submitting posts to see how Mozilla's own web properties handle such strings and to record the comments, if any, others make with regard to the modification; I do mention in my leading sentence I am (or was at that time, anyway) using Fx 3.6.3 just for that very reason, but I do apologize if it caused any confusion. I am happy to see Fx appears to respect the user's setting.

So back on topic:

The cache I am referring to is the listing of entries that appear when typing about:cache into the Awesome Bar. In my case, specifically, this would refer to the RAM cache as it is the only cache (of the three I know of: RAM, disk, and offline) enabled on any of my profiles.

I have attached a screen shot of the cache entries after I completed a manual sorting of 3 bookmarks just a few minutes ago; the key for each entry is the URL associated with each of the bookmarks sorted (by "sorting" I mean I took 3 bookmarks out of the Unsorted Bookmarks folder and dropped them into other folders according to my own personal bookmark classification protocol, ie: Wikipedia bookmarks go into one folder, Google bookmarks into another, bookmarks to sites related to Linux yet another, so on and so forth...) This was all done within the Bookmarks Organizer; no other windows were open and no pages loaded while I was moving the bookmarks.

The content of each cache entry is typically the html of the page the bookmark points to, if indeed the URL of the bookmark points to an html page, either directly (bookmark to www.example.com/page.html) or by some form of standard redirect/default server behavior (bookmark to www.example.com opens www.example.com/index.html, for instance, as the default Apache server behavior). Unfortunately, the screen shots of those pages are huge (1-2 mb in size saved as GIF!) so if you'd like to verify their content as I've reported here, the shots have been uploaded to ImageShack; these links are direct links to the file and because the screenshots are so big in size (because of the narrow column set up in the entries, the pages are VERY LONG), when the image first loads you'll just see what looks like a blurry vertical line, you'll have to zoom in to get it to be readable).

macports bookmark cache entry linux.org bookmark cache entry gparted bookmark cache entry

So, I am sure this is obvious, but when I am disconnected from the internet and repeat the sort process described above, the cache is empty.

The fact that the browser is making requests as the result of simply dropping a bookmark into one folder from another is potentially a privacy problem for the user, not to mention the server-side impact such behavior has on the accuracy of a web page's statistics.

These requests in the cache entries are not reflected in the browser History nor does the Bookmark Organizer indicate that activity has occurred - "Visit Date" on the 3 bookmarks referenced above shows a date other than today.

Also, you've piqued my curiosity - what is the folder you refer to that holds the "history cache"? What is the path to this folder in OS X as I don't have such a folder in any of my profiles - in OS X or in Linux either... the only folders present in my profiles are:

  • bookmarkbackups
  • chrome
  • extensions
  • minidumps
  • searchplugins

Thanks in advance, cheers.

-tom

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MAC: /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>/Cache