Abstract

Research Article

Forensic analysis of private browsing mechanisms: Tracing internet activities

Hasan Fayyad-Kazan*, Sondos Kassem-Moussa, Hussin J Hejase and Ale J Hejase

Published: 08 March, 2021 | Volume 5 - Issue 1 | Pages: 012-019

Forensic analysts are more than ever facing challenges upon conducting their deep investigative analysis on digital devices due to the technological progression. Of these are the difficulties present upon analyzing web browser artefacts as this became more complicated when web browser companies introduced private browsing mode, a feature aiming to protect users’ data upon opening a private browsing session, by leaving no traces of data on the local device used. Aiming to investigate whether the claims of web browser companies are true concerning the protection private browsing provides to the users and whether it really doesn’t leave any browsing data behind, the most popular desktop browsers in Windows were analyzed after surfing them regularly and privately. The results shown in this paper suggest that the privacy provided varies among different companies since evidence might be recovered from some of the browsers but not from others.

Read Full Article HTML DOI: 10.29328/journal.jfsr.1001022 Cite this Article Read Full Article PDF

Keywords:

Web browsers; Regular mode; Private browsing; Artefacts

References

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