Google Chrome has corrected a fault present in browsers for years that exposed the user activity history through the application of styles in the links visited. The links are shown in blue and when they are click on them, they can change color (for example, to the purple). It is a visual way to check the web pages that have already been visited, but also a customization that for years has put user privacy for years.
This is because to carry a follow -up of the activity, the browsers keep the website to which the link in a ‘visited’ history, which is shown on any website in which the link is. If a style has been applied in the link, that is, it changes color to distinguish it from the unknown, then those websites can know that users have already seen it and extract information from the history of web activity. Google has offered a solution to mitigate the impact of this privacy risk.
To do this, it has introduced the partition that “shows a link as visited only if you have clicks from this site previously”, and not from anyone who had the link. “If you have not interacted with this site before, its links will not be shown as visited,” the company explained in the Chrome blog for developers. The partition solution what it does is separate the navigation history based on the context from which the user accessed the link. It also applies in the case of links that lead to subpages of the same website.
In 2010, some browsers already implemented a mitigation by which the styles that web developers could apply and the ‘non -visited’ style to the pages that requested information about the style were limited. Google has added the partition solution in Chrome version 136, being the first browser to implement this protection.