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I have "Do not track" enabled in Firefox options. Researcch says this has no impact on my history. True?

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  • Last reply by ckbeme

ckbeme
ckbeme
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I visited a site yesterday that had info that I REALLY need. But stupidly - I didn't bookmark the page. I searched through history and can't find the page. Is the Do Not Track disabling History entries? Is there any other option for me to find that page? I've done about 25 searches, with 3 different search engines and can't find the site. I looked at my cache, and I'm confused about the dates referenced in the cache display. Screen attachments have some questions on them. Lastly, is there a 'backup' of the previous cache file? Or any other source where I can find that link?

Thanks to anyone that can help me.

Windows 10 FF 44.0.2

ckbeme

I visited a site yesterday that had info that I REALLY need. But stupidly - I didn't bookmark the page. I searched through history and can't find the page. Is the Do Not Track disabling History entries? Is there any other option for me to find that page? I've done about 25 searches, with 3 different search engines and can't find the site. I looked at my cache, and I'm confused about the dates referenced in the cache display. Screen attachments have some questions on them. Lastly, is there a 'backup' of the previous cache file? Or any other source where I can find that link? Thanks to anyone that can help me. Windows 10 FF 44.0.2 ckbeme
Attached screenshots

Chosen solution

Thanks to you guys Gert Van and cor-el. Sorry I was so slow responding to your attempts to help me. I had to go out of town with very little warning. Got back almost 2 days ago, but have been playing catch up since getting in.

Regarding my missing history entry: I didn't have private browsing turned on. Just that one option where you tell sites you don't want to be tracked. And Gert Van, I did go into History and look at 'Yesterday's entries' very thoroughly. And when I didn't see the one I needed, I actually clicked on EVERY history entry for that day, thinking maybe their description of their page was off the mark. I've blown it off. I find it hard to believe the page wasn't in history, but also that I wasn't able to get the page to come up in Google search. Live and learn. From now on, if I land on a page that seems to have some merit, I will Bookmark it straight away. I'm sure I'll stumble upon it when I'm 75 or 80 years old.....  ;-)

Thanks to both of you for trying to solve the mystery.

Cathy

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Gert Van Waelvelde
Gert Van Waelvelde
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Hello,

Were you using the 'Private Browsing' mode? If so, your visited web pages won't be saved to your history. Otherwise you should be able to find the page you visited in your browsing history.

If you press CONTROL + H, you should see you browsing history appear on the left of your screen. Click on 'Yesterday' to see all the pages you visited yesterday.

Modified by Gert Van Waelvelde

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Make sure that you do not confuse do-not-track and Tracking Protection. However both do not affect the history.

Selecting the "do-not-track" setting will only make Firefox send a specific HTTP header ("Tell sites that I do not want to be tracked.": DNT=1) to a web server. It is up to the server to do something with that request.

The Tracking Protection feature block some content from specific domains, but shouldn't affect the history as well. This new Tracking Protection feature is enabled by default in Private Browsing mode. You can disable this feature in "Options/Preferences > Privacy".

ckbeme
ckbeme Question owner
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Chosen Solution

Thanks to you guys Gert Van and cor-el. Sorry I was so slow responding to your attempts to help me. I had to go out of town with very little warning. Got back almost 2 days ago, but have been playing catch up since getting in.

Regarding my missing history entry: I didn't have private browsing turned on. Just that one option where you tell sites you don't want to be tracked. And Gert Van, I did go into History and look at 'Yesterday's entries' very thoroughly. And when I didn't see the one I needed, I actually clicked on EVERY history entry for that day, thinking maybe their description of their page was off the mark. I've blown it off. I find it hard to believe the page wasn't in history, but also that I wasn't able to get the page to come up in Google search. Live and learn. From now on, if I land on a page that seems to have some merit, I will Bookmark it straight away. I'm sure I'll stumble upon it when I'm 75 or 80 years old.....  ;-)

Thanks to both of you for trying to solve the mystery.

Cathy