by Anura Guruge

Click to ENLARGE.

Once a month, religiously, around the 15th of the month, I do a complete purge of my Chrome ‘Browsing Data‘. Everything … sans exception. Cookies, browsing history, download history … THE WOKS. I click all the boxes and do a ‘Clear Data’. Some months it takes a few minutes to clear the lot because so, so much accumulates over a month — especially given that I can easily hit 1,000+ Web pages a day.

I also, every night, last thing clear ‘Cached Images & Files‘ and ‘Passwords‘.

I have, in the case of Chrome, been doing this for at least 7 or 8 years, after I switched to it from FireFox. [I did the same with FireFox, maybe more often.]

As an IT Professional of 45-years standing, I can assure you that this is a great practice and will save you a lot of aggravation over the long term. Yes, clearing the cookies and browsing history is inconvenient, BUT you really want to refresh everything every month.

Anywho …

Today and last month, I noticed, that with the latest Chrome, Google is being a bit naughty.

It claims to have cleared everything, BUT it is keeping track of some stuff!

What do I mean.

For a start it no longer deletes the cookies involved with Chrom itself. It remembers your accounts! Not a big deal for I because nobody else uses this PC. But, this could be a security concern for some. Doing a FULL CLEAR no longer means you have got rid of everything.

I also noticed that it is retaining my MOST used Web page addresses. So, I do a FULL CLEAR and then I go to type in the URL for this blog … and BINGO, Chrome autofills it! It is NOT supposed to know, it is not supposed to have remembered. This wasn’t the case even a few months ago. After my monthly CLEAR I would have to type in all my URLs in FULL, for the first time. Not anymore.

I Googled. Couldn’t find anything about this.

So, I am giving you a HEADS UP.

Check it out. Some of your data may still be around unbeknownst to YOU.

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by Anura Guruge