Protecting Your Privacy in Safari for OS X El Capitan

Every time you visit a website you are sharing information about yourself with the outside world. This article runs through a number of methods you can use to gain more control over what gets shared, and who it gets shared with, whenever you use Apple’s Safari browser to access the web on a Mac.

It also covers methods you can use to prevent traces of your browsing history from showing up on your computer. While you may trust friends and family not to go searching through your web history, it’s possible for them to unintentionally discover what you’ve been looking at, just by using Safari or performing an innocent search on your Mac. If you’re interested in a similar overview covering Safari on iOS, check out this guide.

This guide assumes you are using the latest public release of OS X El Capitan (10.11.6 as of initial writing), which you can check by clicking the  symbol in the menu bar at the top left of your screen and selecting “About This Mac”. The version number appears beneath the OS X version name. If you’re not up to date, you can download and install the latest version of OS X via the Mac App Store located on the Dock or in the Applications folder.

Cookies, Location Services, and Tracking

Many websites attempt to store cookies and other web page data on computers used to access online content. Cookies are small data files that can include things like your IP address, operating system, web browser version, the date you last visited the site, as well as any personal information you may have provided, such as your name, email address, and any relevant preferences. This information is used to identify you when you revisit a site, so that it can offer tailored services, provide specific content, or display targeted ads.

Websites are increasingly upfront about their use of cookies – you’ve probably seen notices on popular sites requesting that you acknowledge their use. That’s largely because EU law requires sites based within its borders to get consent from visitors to store or retrieve cookie data, and as of September 2015, Google requires that any website using its advertising products complies with the law if any of its visitors are inside the EU, regardless of where the site itself is based.

By default, Safari accepts cookies and website data only from websites you visit, and attempts to block third-party cookies that try to target you with ads or create a profile of your online activities. If you don’t like the idea of being tracked at all, you can selectively block the use of cookies by following the steps below. Note however that some pages might not work unless you allow the use of cookies, so if you run into login problems or other issues on familiar sites after adjusting these settings, then you might want to dial back the changes.

Additionally, you may have noticed how Safari asks if you want to share your location whenever you visit a geolocation-enabled website. If you don’t expect the site to provide helpful location-based services such as regional weather information or local amenities, you can deny the request and continue to do so like this on a case-by-case basis. Alternatively, you can change Safari’s behavior whenever it encounters such a site, as described in the following steps.

Lastly, Do Not Track is a feature you can enable to prevent websites from tracking your site visits across the web. With the feature turned on, Safari specifically asks sites and their third party content providers (including advertisers) not to track you. In reality, it’s up to the website to honor this request, but it’s an option worth enabling for a potential extra layer of privacy.

Here’s how to change Safari settings for cookies, location services, and tracking:

From Safari’s menu bar, select Safari -> Preferences…, and click on the Privacy tab.

Select how Safari should deal with cookies and website data by clicking on the relevant button. Your options are: Always block, Allow from current website only, Allow from websites I visit (the default setting), and Always allow.

This tab also lets you check any existing website data stored in your browser cache. You can get more information on it, as well as remove data for individual websites, by clicking the “Details…” button.

To remove all data completely, press the button on the Privacy tab labeled “Remove All Website Data…” and confirm with “Remove Now”, or click “Remove All” from within the “Details…” dialog.

In the section labeled “Website use of location services”, choose from: Prompt for each website once each day; Prompt for each website one time only; and Deny without prompting.

To enable the Do Not Track feature, check the box at the bottom of the Privacy tab next to “Ask websites not to track me”.

Enable Private Browsing

By enabling Private Browsing, you can prevent Safari from remembering the pages you visit and any AutoFill information, while any tabs you open within a private window won’t be stored in iCloud. Safari also automatically asks sites and third-party content providers not to track you, prevents sites from modifying any information stored on your Mac, and deletes cookies when you close the related tab or window.

In Safari’s menu bar, select File -> New Private Window. You’ll notice the Safari address bar appears dark instead of light in a private window, indicating that Safari will not cache your browsing history, store snapshots of pages you visited or save your search history, and any AutoFill information will be lost after the window (or tab) is closed.

If you want to default to private browsing, you can set Safari to open a new Private Browsing window every time the app is launched. Choose Safari -> Preferences…, click General, select the “Safari opens with” pop-up menu, then choose “A new private window”.

Clear Browsing History

Safari for Mac enables you to remove all records of your browsing history including cookies and other cached website data over a specific timeframe of your choosing.

Browsing records that are cleared using the first method described below include any Top Sites not marked as permanent, your Frequently Visited Sites list, recent searches typed into the Safari search bar, web page snapshots shown in the open tab preview screen, download lists (but not downloads), sites you asked to send you notifications, and sites supporting Quick Website Search (the ability to search within specific sites from the Safari search bar).

Note that this method also clears history and web data from any devices logged into the same iCloud account.

To clear all history including cached website data and cookies, select Safari -> Clear History… from the Safari menu bar.

In the dialog window that appears, select the timeframe that you’d like to clear from the dropdown menu. Your options are: the last hour, today, today and yesterday, and all history. Click “Clear History” to confirm.If you want to clear your history but keep cached website data and cookies, hold the Alt/Option key on your keyboard during step 1 above, and the “Clear History…” menu option will change to “Clear History and Keep Website Data”. Choose this description instead and continue on to select your clearance timeframe.

If you only want to remove specific websites from your history, ignore the steps above and instead click “History” in the Safari menu bar, select “Show History”, right-click a site in the list, and then select “Remove” from the contextual menu.

Exclude Browsing History From Spotlight Searches

If you’d rather retain your browsing history but don’t want web pages you’ve visited to appear in system-wide Spotlight Search results, follow these steps.

Open System Preferences and select the Spotlight pane.

In the Search Results tab, uncheck the box next to “Bookmarks & History” (and “Bing Web Searches”, if this is your default search engine).

Switch Search Engine and Disable Safari Suggestions

Just because you cleared your browsing history and web data in Safari or browsed in a Private window, doesn’t mean your searches aren’t still recorded elsewhere. For example, if you logged into a Google account during the session, searches you performed may be logged by Google and later show up as search suggestions when you start typing in the Google search bar in the same account. In fact, your search and ad results may be customized based on your search-related activity, even if you’re signed out of your account.

To get around this issue, either consult the privacy help page of your preferred search engine to learn how to turn off tracking settings, or set a non-tracking search engine such as StartPage as your home page (using the General tab in Safari -> Preferences…). The next series of steps shows you how to set up Safari to use the non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo when you type search queries into the address bar.

Another thing to reconsider is your use of Safari Suggestions. With this option enabled, your search queries, the Safari Suggestions you select, and related usage data are sent to Apple. Additionally, if you have Location Services turned on, when you make a search query in Safari with Safari Suggestions enabled your location is also sent to Apple. If you don’t want this information shared, turn off Safari Suggestions as shown below.

From the Safari menu bar, select Safari -> Preferences…, and click on the Search tab.

Select the DuckDuckGo search engine from the dropdown menu. You can also choose whether you want search engine suggestions appearing in the Safari search bar using the checkbox immediately below.

Uncheck the box next to “Include Safari Suggestions” in the Smart Search Field options; you can also disable the Quick Website Search function if you prefer by using the checkbox below.

Disable Frequently Visited Sites

By default, Frequently Visited Sites appear below your Favorites whenever you open a new tab or a new Safari window. You can turn this feature off.

There are two ways to prevent frequently visited sites from appearing in new tabs and windows. The simplest way is to click Bookmarks in the Safari menu bar and untick “Show Frequently Visited in Favorites”. The second method described below prevents Favorites from appearing in new tabs and windows altogether, but removes the option to display your Top Sites as well.

From the Safari menu bar, select Safari -> Preferences…, and select the General tab.

In the dropdown menus for “New windows open with:” and “New tabs open with:”, select an option other than Favorites, such as “Empty Page”.

Turn Off AutoFill

Safari’s AutoFill feature remembers text and values you enter into online forms, and can be useful for speeding up logins and registrations as well as online purchases. If other people use your Mac, you might not want this information to show up when websites are revisited. Here’s how to disable AutoFill.

In the Safari menu bar, select Safari -> Preferences… and click on the AutoFill tab.

Uncheck the boxes next to the details you wish to prevent Safari from autocompleting in web forms. You can also edit already saved information by clicking the “Edit…” buttons.

Finally…

If your web privacy concerns extend to a desire for enhanced security and comprehensive end-to-end encryption, consider subscribing to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service (Private Internet Access and IPVanish are two popular choices) and using Tor browser for OS X.

Tags: Safari, privacy
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How to watch the Rio 2016 Olympics on TV, online, mobile and in VR

The Rio 2016 Olympics are finally upon us and we can look forward to more than two weeks of action across a vast array of sports.

The Opening and Closing Ceremonies will also be streamed live around the world, with the former starting tonight, 5 August. So here is our guide on how to catch that and the rest of the sporting activities throughout the following 17 days.

You can catch it all on multiple formats, whether you are at home or out. Here’s how.

Rio 2016 Olympic Games timings

It is important to note, especially if you are in the UK, that Rio is in a different time zone so events will be on British TV screens four hours later than you’d expect.

The Opening Ceremony, for example, starts at 8pm in Brazil, but its UK showing will start at 8.30pm tonight for a midnight start and run into the early hours of Saturday morning, 6 August.

There will still be plenty of action throughout each day though, that you can catch at reasonable times.

How can I watch the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on TV?

The BBC has the rights to the entire Olympic Games in the UK and it will start its live coverage with the Opening Ceremony at midnight tonight, 5 August.

Some events have already begun, with some football matches having been played already, for instance. But the majority of sports will start tomorrow, Saturday 6 August, after the Games are officially opened during the lighting of the flame ceremony.

BBC One and BBC Four will be showing the best of the action each day, although will also be able to access extra live channels through the Red Button service, available across different TVs, set-top-boxes and platforms.

How can I watch the Rio 2016 Olympic Games online?

The BBC Sport website will also be hosting highlights and live channels all day every day of the event. Just head to bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016.

A daily round-up show will also be available on BBC iPlayer.

How can I watch the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on my smartphone or tablet?

The BBC Sport app for iOS and Android will provide all the news and details coming from the Games. You can also set it up to send you notifications of anything you want to keep track of. That includes Rio 2016 in general or any of the sports individually.

You can watch the live broadcasts through BBC iPlayer on your mobile device, streamed from BBC One and BBC Four, and links to specific live shows will appear in the BBC Sport app for you to scroll down to.

There will also be highlight packages available to watch each day.

How can I watch the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in virtual reality?

This year, the BBC is also offering Rio coverage in 360-degrees, so you can watch it on a VR headset and feel more like you are there.

• Watch the Olympics like never before, BBC Sport 360 VR app puts you in the heart of the action

You need to download the trial version of the BBC Sport 360 app for Android or iOS and each day there will be an event shown in 360-degrees.

This footage will work with iPhone and Android VR headsets, and in the Samsung Gear VR.

Here’s a full schedule of what will be shown in VR and when:

• Friday 5 August: 00:00-03:30 – Opening Ceremony
• Saturday 6 August: 14:00-17:50, 19:30-20:20, 01:00-04:50 – Beach Volleyball
• Sunday 7 August: 14:00-17:50, 19:30-20:20, 01:00-04:50 – Beach Volleyball
• Monday 8 August: 15:00-18:00, 21:00-00:00 – Boxing
• Tuesday 9 August: 15:00-18:00, 21:00-00:00 – Boxing
• Wednesday 10 August 10: 20:00-22:45 – Artistic Gymnastics
• Thursday 11 August: 20:00-22:10 – Artistic Gymnastics
• Friday 12 August: 13:00-19:30, 21:00-23:50 – Fencing
• Saturday 13 August: 13:30-16:50 & 00:00-03:15 – Athletics
• Sunday 14 August: 00:20-02:30 – Athletics
• Monday 15 August: 13:30-16:10 & 00:15-02:50 – Athletics
• Tuesday 16 August: 13:30-16:40 & 00:15-02:50 – Athletics
• Wednesday 17 August: 02:00-05:05 – Beach Volleyball
• Thursday 18 August: 02:00-05:05 – Beach Volleyball
• Friday 19 August: 19:30-21:30 – Basketball (Men’s SFs)
• Saturday 20 August: 15:00-16:50 & 19:30-22:00 – Diving
• Sunday 21 August: 15:30-17:30 & 19:45-22:05 – Basketball (Men’s Finals)
• Monday 22 August: 00:00-03:30 – Closing Ceremony

LinkedIn debuts ‘influencer’ videos for interview tips and more

Video has become a big part of the business strategy for social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. Now, LinkedIn is following a similar path by letting certain people share original videos on its platform. The new tool will only be available to over 500 “influencers” on LinkedIn, someone like the CEO or co-founder of a company. By letting you see these 30-second videos on your feed, LinkedIn says it hopes users can engage on a conversation about topics they’re interested in, such as getting advice on how to get hired for a job.

As it stands, LinkedIn doesn’t appear to have any plans to let everyone access this new feature, but that could change later on. Notably, this is the first major change to the social network since being acquired by Microsoft in June for $26.2 billion. And chances are there will be many more to come.

Source: LinkedIn

The best Bluetooth tracker

By Nick Guy

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read the full article here.

Bluetooth trackers are small gadgets you attach to important items you’re worried about losing (such as keys or a bag) that let you use an app on your smartphone to locate those items—usually with an audible tone on the tracker itself and a map on your phone’s screen. After 10 hours of research and another 10 hours of hands-on testing, we found the best Bluetooth tracker for most people is the second-generation Tile. Not only is it the least expensive of the trackers we tested—with an even lower price if you buy multiple Tiles—but it also has the longest range, making it the most useful for finding your stuff.

How we picked and tested

The Bluetooth trackers we tested. Photo: Nick Guy

After checking Amazon and Google for major players in this category, we used comparative reviews from The Wall Street Journal and Yahoo to compile a list of five models to test. We quickly dismissed the XY Find It (which has since been replaced by a newer version we haven’t yet tested)​ because it can’t ping your phone, and the Pebblebee Honey because it uses a silent push alert that’s all but worthless. We were left with three models: Tile, Protag Duet, and TrackR Bravo.

We went to a park to test how far away we could move a connected smartphone from each tracker before the Bluetooth connection was lost; longer ranges are better because your phone is more likely to stay connected to the tracker and thus help you find your lost item. After ensuring that only one tracker was paired to the test phone at a time, we set that tracker down on a bench, then we walked away while measuring the distance using a measuring wheel. Once the tracker’s app showed the tracker as out of range, we recorded the distance before walking back toward the tracker until the connection was reestablished, and then recorded that distance. We also tested the loudness of each tracker’s alarm and incorporated those findings in our recommendations.

Our pick

The Tile in its natural habitat. Photo: Nick Guy

The best Bluetooth tracker for most people is the second-generation Tile. It maintained its connection to a smartphone at the longest range, and reconnected from the farthest distance. We got about 120 feet away before the connection was lost with the Tile, while the Protag Duet disconnected at 84 and the TrackR at 56. As for how close we had to be before the tracker and phone reconnected, the Tile at 40 feet was right behind the Duet at 42 feet. The TrackR came in a distant third at 19 feet.

Though the Tile’s alarm isn’t the loudest—the Protag Duet was louder in absolute terms by about 7 decibels—we could hear it better in a quiet park than we could hear the competition thanks to the tone sequence the company uses. Specifically, we could still hear the Tile’s alarm from about 100 feet away in the park, whereas we couldn’t hear the Protag Duet from more than about 40 feet away. We also like that the Tile keeps making noise until you manually turn it off, whereas the Duet’s tone plays for only 10 seconds. The Tile also has a crowd-finding feature that lets other users of the Tile smartphone app help you locate items that are out of Bluetooth range.

Finally, setup is as easy as it gets, thanks to Tile’s use of Bluetooth LE, which makes connecting devices easier and also extends battery life.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Perhaps the biggest downside to the Tile is its lack of a replaceable battery. When the charge runs out after a year, the hardware is dead. Tile does have a replacement program that’s a pretty good deal: For $12 per Tile–about half the price of a fresh purchase–the company will ship you a replacement, and it’s the most current version of the hardware at that.

The company will include an envelope for you to mail back the old Tile for recycling, which we’re happy to see. Yes, it’s more expensive than just putting a new battery in one of the competing trackers, and it’s more wasteful than if you could simply replace the battery, but getting new hardware every year is a big plus.

The competition

Although the Protag Duet was the runner-up in our distance test and a favorite among reviewers, we can’t recommend it based on both our own testing and really, really bad Amazon customer reviews. For example, when we paired the Duet with a Galaxy S6, the Protag app showed the device’s location in Africa, instead of our actual location of Buffalo, New York; and one of our review units also made a weird clicking noise. On Amazon, 49 percent of the 154 reviews are one star. We rarely see any sort of product with ratings that bad. Most of the complaints are about the build quality, reliability of the Bluetooth connection, false positives (the tracker’s geofencing alarm going off even when the Duet is in range), and poor geolocating.

TrackR released a new version of the Bravo at the beginning of October 2015. It supposedly had improved range and a louder alarm than the previous version. In our testing, however, the Bluetooth range was poor, even with the new hardware: The TrackR Bravo disconnected from our test phone at less than half the distance of the Tile (56 feet) and didn’t reconnect until it was only 19 feet away. These results were terrible compared with the other models we tested.

We also considered testing the Pebblebee Honey and the XY Find It. The Pebblebee Honey has some great attributes, at least at first glance. The battery is replaceable, and the tracker has a crowd-finding feature. Unfortunately, when you press the tracker’s button to trigger an alert on a missing phone, it sends a silent text alert, rather than playing an audible tone. A message popping up on the screen doesn’t do much good when you’re looking for the handset.

The XY Find It, on the other hand, offers proper geofencing, something most of the competition lacks. But the tracker has no way of pinging a paired phone, disqualifying it from a top spot.

This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Fully Functional iPhone 7 Lightning EarPods Shown Off in New Video

Over the past few weeks, images have claimed to show Apple’s upcoming Lightning-enabled EarPods, but most were found to be fake as the design language of the headphones largely deviated from Apple’s usual aesthetic, especially in regards to not having a thin, rectangular Lightning plug. Today, MobileFun posted a video of a working pair of Lightning EarPods, and the overall look of the accessory appears more in line with Apple’s design than any of the previous leaks.

As is expected, the headphone part of the new EarPods is structured the same as the EarPods currently being sold by Apple, with a clean, white design, right and left markers on each earpiece, and in-line volume and play/pause controls. Interestingly, the in-line controls are placed farther down on the EarPods, directly below the right/left split in the cable design. If real, this would mark a design change from the current generation, which places the volume rocker along the right cable, above the bifurcation in the cord.

The most notable part is, of course, the long-rumored addition of the Lightning plug onto the EarPods, adapted to take advantage of the removal of the 3.5 mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The plug on the Lightning-enabled EarPods appears slightly bigger than Apple’s traditional Lightning adapters thanks to the inclusion of a digital-to-analog converter needed for music playback and not just straightforward charging.

In the video, the EarPods are proven to be completely functional through the playing of a few songs as well as using the in-line controls to play, pause, and skip some tracks. MobileFun concluded to its viewers, “as you can see, these are fully working, they aren’t just a mock-up of what you might receive,” believing that the working headphones will be what Apple sells alongside the new generation of iPhone in September.

Multiple solutions for the removal of the 3.5 mm headphone jack have sprouted up over the past few weeks, with one of the most prevailing alternatives centering around a Lightning to 3.5 mm dongle that the company could potentially bundle into the box of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus to cushion the transition for customers. More recently, it was reported that Apple could be working on completely wireless “AirPods” as an option for iPhone users, allowing simultaneous iPhone charging and headphone music playback, which is one of the most commonly occurring grievances surrounding the loss of the 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Previous Coverage: Lightning Headphones: Are They Better or Just an Inconvenience?

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: EarPods
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