How to Hide From Netscape

by J.P.  (trmbone@hotmail.com)

Do you ever access sites that you don't want anyone to know about?  In this article I will help you keep your privacy while you are looking at pages that might be of concern.

One day I was on the computer when I realized that I was on a questionable page (which is a nice term for a hacking page or something of the sort), and that in order to clear my tracks I would have to delete my history URLs on Netscape, then clear that pop down list, plus I would have to clear the temporary Internet files, and that would do a good job of preventing people from seeing where I had been.  To do this it would have taken me like 10 minutes, which is too long when your parents or boss or whoever want to see where you've been.  So what I did was made a simple batch file to do all the dirty work.

Netscape stores its history file (netscape.hst) and preference files (prefs.js) in your user directory (in my case C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\Rusty).

In order to get a "clean copy" of netscape.hst I went into Netscape and clicked Edit -> Preferences then Clear History.  Now to clear that damn drop down history list you have to edit the prefs.js file.  Open it with WordPad and delete the lines that look something like:

user_pref("browser.url_history.URL_1","www.2600.com"); user_pref("browser.url_history.URL_2","www.hacking.com");

Only delete those lines, or else you have screwed up your preferences for Netscape, and it is a pain to fix.  Then after both files are clean, you can hide any suspicions by going to sites like www.pbs.com so no one will think you're up to anything.

Now that these two files are modified to your liking, make a copy of each one (netscape.hst and netscape2.hst).

Now you are ready to program your batch file.  First of all you want to replace your old copies of your files with the cleaned up ones:

cd \progra~1\netscape\users\rusty del prefs.js copy prefs2.js prefs.js del netscape.hst copy netscape2.hst netscape.hst

Now you need to clean your temporary Internet files:

cd \progra~1\netscape\users\rusty\cache del *.gif del *.jpg del *.htm del *.txt del *.wav

Note:  The reason I didn't just do del *.* is because the fat.db is a very important file for Netscape and can't be screwed up.

Be smart.  Know that these examples don't always cover your ass.  Basically this will keep your privacy on your home computer, and that's about it.  Don't try this on your school's network which has programs on it to track your whereabouts on the Internet.