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how do I disable private browsing?

  • 2 iimpendulo
  • 6 inale ngxaki
  • 4 views
  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu the-edmeister

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I have a 13 yr old son, I do not like what he has been viewing, he has figured out private browsing. I want to monitor what he has been viewing

I have a 13 yr old son, I do not like what he has been viewing, he has figured out private browsing. I want to monitor what he has been viewing

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The developers didn't provide any method of disabling or hiding the Private Browsing feature.

You can hide the Menu items for turning Private Browsing on and off, but the keyboard command will still turn it on: Add this code to userChrome.css below the @namespace line. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Editing_configuration#How_to_edit_configuration_files

  1. sanitizeSeparator, #privateBrowsingItem, #sanitizeItem
  2. privateBrowsingAutoStart


There's a Bug filed to disable Private Browsing when "parental controls" are enabled, but that won't help WinXP users - only Vista & (probably) Windows 7 users - but there's been no action to even work on that Bug. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=471658 See comment#26, by me, and the response it generated from one of the developers. The developers seem unwilling to do anything, even to restore Firefox 3.5+ versions to the previous state - sans Private Browsing. There hasn't even been a comment added in that Bug report in the last 3 months. It looks like "parental" concerns about Private Browsing aren't "worth the cost" to complete that feature, as it should have been before they released that feature on their "trusting public", or should I say, unsuspecting public to begin with. I an getting real tried of Mozilla releasing this half-finished garbage into the public realm and then not fixing it for a couple of years, if ever, in response to user concerns. IMO, too many "young pups" who don't have children and the responsibility of raising children in decision making positions at Mozilla. If it ain't a corporate demand to make Firefox work "better" with Windows in the corporate world, it doesn't seem to account for much, or for timely action from the Mozilla developers, it seems. Slap a patch and fresh coat of paint on it, and it's out the door.

Let Mozilla know how you feel about not being able to disable Private Browsing in Firefox here: http://hendrix.mozilla.org/ --- Your best solution probably is installing some sort of Parental Control software that limits the types of websites he can view, and also keeps its' own history of the websites that he does visit that only you can delete. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Parental_controls

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