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I work for a women's shelter and wanted to know if it was possible to make our website not appear in their browser's search history.

Despite Incognito mode and deleting your history being obvious choices, some survivors seeking help may not know about those features, especially considering some circumstances where they're actively kept in the dark about the outside world by their abuser, and abusers in-turn can use that lack of knowledge to control and monitor them.

For context, we contracted another company to design and run the site; I just work in the IT department, and they were asking everyone for suggestions.

Garret
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    I don't see how that is possible, but may be wrong – OldProgrammer Mar 02 '22 at 19:09
  • Not that I'm aware of, browser history is a client-side feature. It's like asking "I'm building a carwash, can I make the carwash automatically put the client's car in neutral as they enter". – JNevill Mar 02 '22 at 19:10
  • Probably the best thing you can do is have a discrete URL/page title and show a clear message on top about which keys to press to delete the history (by detecting OS/browser) – Arne Mar 02 '22 at 19:13
  • You could use Javascript to clear _some things_, however you can't make the visit completely undetected. See [How to clear browsing history using JavaScript?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20044554/how-to-clear-browsing-history-using-javascript). Also see [Web/API/History](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History) – Markus AO Mar 02 '22 at 19:13
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    [This](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2860879/detecting-if-a-browser-is-using-private-browsing-mode) is possibly the best advice I can give: try to detect if the browser is incognito. If it is *not*, then warn the user. – Jeff Holt Mar 02 '22 at 19:14
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    Throwing ideas here - how about loading your real site via an iframe and advertise your site by pointing users to a different domain, one whose name wouldn't be suspicious? Sites loaded via iframes don't appear in browser history. – N.B. Mar 02 '22 at 19:32
  • How do people get to your site to begin with, I would assume most probably won't type the domain name directly or use it from a bookmark ... but they will likely have _googled_ it instead. So even if there was anything you could do regarding your _own_ site, the history of them using Google would still stay untouched by that. – CBroe Mar 03 '22 at 09:44

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Without user's permission you can not do anything even if you will be able to code. It has to ask each time to user to give permission for modification because your website is gonna be 3rd party and without granting permission from the user's side it is not possible. The best way is to hack and install extensions to the user's device. After installing the extension you have to add a website URL that you want not to be shown in history.

For Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/history-autodelete/

For Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-blocker-by-site/keamekimefemnbgegbfkdkmbomaahfai?hl=en

bhatter
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