Comodo Dragon does not allow clearing browsing data anymore

There is a new “feature” in Comodo that prevents you from clearing browsing data, when you try clearing now, it states:

“Saved content settings and search engines will not be cleared and may reflect your browsing habits.”

You can see the new code here: chromium Git repositories - Git at Google

Basically this means that even after clearing browsing data, all your Google search history (or whatever search engine is the browser’s default) along with some “content settings” will stay there for Google to track you.

I think this is a test of Comodo Dragon’s commitment to privacy. For Comodo to claim Dragon offers an “unparalelled level of security and privacy” this obstacle to clearing browsing data needs to be removed. Otherwise it will be time to look for another browser that actually offers better privacy.

Regards

Hasn’t this always been this way, but just not telling the user, whereas now it does tell the user which is an improvement ?

Personally I install my own preference for search engine Startpage - Private Search Engine. No Tracking. No Search History.

Use that as default search engine and get rid of the others ( Yahoo, Google, Bing … all deleted )

Comodo will re-install them when you update Dragon unfortunately, I think they have to.

Also Dragon does not clear everything out has been known for a few years, its the same with all Chromium based browsers, if you have the advanced settings set to “Clear at Exit” all of them ticked ( You will notice Dragon takes a little longer to shut down ), there will still be residue files to clean up … To prove that use CCleaner after you have closed the browser, and it will find files from Chrome ( its just mistakenly identifying Dragon as Chrome ).

Even if you use the advanced setting to open the browser in incognito mode, which should not save anything to hard drive while you are using it … CCleaner will still find things it left behind.

Best version of CCleaner if you are interested, is here in the builds downloads Builds

I use the Portable version, which does not have any installer trying to install tool bars etc etc
Just extract the archive, put the folder somewhere on your hard drive you want to run it from, right click the CCleaner.exe inside the folder and choose ““Send to” - Desktop”. For a convenient icon to run it ( You can now rename this desktop icon just to CCleaner ). When run, it will save its portable settings in the same folder. To update it in future, just overwrite the same files.

I think Dragon should do more in this regard also, maybe the Comodo team can expand the “Clear at Exit” options they put in advanced settings, or maybe they dont know how to fully clear out all history this browser stores yet.

Or maybe, clearing this stuff out fully might not be conducive to the handshakes Comodo have with Yahoo ?, who knows. :slight_smile:

Or maybe, clearing this stuff out fully might not be conducive to the handshakes Comodo have with Yahoo ?, who knows. :)
Comodo only has a deal with Yahoo. Not with the others. Since it puts back the others too it is likely that other motive(s) than financial play a role. May just a form of user friendliness or something that is overlooked.

If being concerned about your privacy, I’d recommend using the following programs for cleaning:

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/slim/downloadfile
combined with
SingularLabs - Software For Windows (adding way more thorough cleaning capabilities to CCleaner).

http://thisisudax.org/downloads/JRT.exe

Kind regards, REBOL. :slight_smile:

And yes, w33d3r’s (ixquick) recommendation is something very useful as well.

EricJH that last line of mine you quoted was meant in relation to the cached history which CCleaner finds Dragon has not cleaned out … Not the first part of my post you also quoted.

Your quoting kind of put the relevance out of context, because any motive which could be associated with a deal, would surely be with the data which was not getting cleaned out with “Clear at Exit”

Maybe the installer also re-installing search engines and home pages is as you say a harmless oversight, maybe.

But I have been answered by one of the programmers on the same subject of changing search engines, and the words used were something similar to “Lucky you, I do not get the option” ( I cannot find the post unfortunately ).
Make of that what you will.

Whilst some products by Comodo do their job really well, I’ve decidedly chosen to not use Dragon or any other Chrome / Chromium related browser at this moment.

Kind regards, REBOL.

Morphos, don’t you think two lines would have sufficed rather than the above abundance? :wink: