what does the vertical line in google chrome history mean

Note that this only shows the latest time that browsing data was deleted timestamps of previous clearing are not saved here.Ī third (but in my opinion less likely) scenario that explains no records at all is that the user had Chrome set to run exclusively in Incognito mode. Hindsight XLSX output showing 'Clearing Chrome Data' settings Hindsight will parse these values out for you (if you are using the XLSX output format, it places them on the 'Preferences' tab). browser.clear_data has a number of children that document what items had been cleared at the specified time. browser.last_clear_browsing_data_time has a WebKit timestamp of the last time the user cleared browsing data from Chrome. If the user did in fact clear their Chrome history, the 'smoking gun' may be found in the Chrome Preferences file. Timestamp of last time history data was cleared in Chrome Preferences file You can compare the version of Chrome on the system and the release date of that particular version if they are substantially different, the browser may not have been launched recently. First, what version of Chrome is installed? Chrome is quite good about keeping itself up to date via silent, automatic updates, so an older version of Chrome is a good indicator that the browser hasn't been launched in quite a while. Let's dig a little further to try and determine which case is more likely.

On Windows and Mac computers, Chrome is very seldom the only web browser installed, so the user could simply be using a different one.

If there are no records at all, there are a two likely scenarios: either the browsing history has indeed been cleared, or the user didn't actually use that browser. Let's take a look at each of these scenarios before declaring that the history has been cleared. Why do you think that the Chrome history had been cleared? Is it because there are no browsing records at all? Gaps in the entries? Records that stop abruptly after a few months? Each of these variations has a potential explanation besides 'the user cleared their history'.

What does the vertical line in google chrome history mean