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Is it at all possible that the privacy setting regarding saving history (tools,options,privacy)can change other than me selecting it?

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  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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Like is there some software, malware, anything that would change it from Save history to NEVER save history? I hope someone can help.

Like is there some software, malware, anything that would change it from Save history to NEVER save history? I hope someone can help.

All Replies (4)

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Hi, perhaps if you work through this article, there may be something there that will solve you problem.

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Your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts. The user.js file is only present if you or other software has created this file and normally it wouldn't be there.

You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: "Open with"; do not double-click). The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.

You can delete the user.js file if you didn't create this file yourself.

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

See also:

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Hi, thank you for your response. It's a bit techy for my brain, however lol. My question is rather simple: If you have your history set to "remember history" and it changes to "NEVER remember history", is there any way it was changed other than the computer user changing it? Thanks.

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Normally you wouldn't switch from normal mode to permanent private browsing mode (never remember history). Extensions and other software on your computer could do that.

Did you try to go to the Firefox profile folder and check the content of the user.js file with a text editor?

You shouldn't double-click the file, but use "Open with" in the right-click context menu to open the file in a text editor.

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)

Windows hides some file extensions by default. Among them are .html and .ini and .js and .txt, so you may only see file name without file extension. You can see the real file type (file extension) in the properties of the file via the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer.