>that seems a little naive. what about actual evidence of performing said wipe? a little progress bar showing the 35× overwrite technique maybe, verified by a failed recovery

Implementing this is problematic because depending on the filesystem, it might not be possible to "wipe" a file by repeatedly writing over it. For instance, if it's a log structured filesystem. On the other hand, you might not even need to overwrite in some cases, eg. filesystems on SSDs with trim support. Also you don't need 35x overwrites. There's no evidence that even 1x overwrite can be recovered on contemporary hard drives.

Store browsing data in memory. That said, data being available to forensic level HD recovery is very different from data still being used to populate the most visited sites.

storing in memory would only provide browsing data for the current session, permanent storage of history is not possible without writing to disk

That would provide fairly strong evidence that it was actually being deleted.

if what you are referring to were possible

It's not really hard, you just want a system that let's you save your history through a reboot.

even if the browser's storage engine was part of a RAMdisk for each session, such an area would still have to reside in hard disk storage to survive a reboot

Needing to survive a reboot isn't necessary. This system would let you know that nothing is being saved. It's not perfect, but it does that thing very well.

it is necessary in relation to the original topic of browser history

>seems like nowadays the only way to ensure and audit personal privacy is by...

Storing the history in memory also solves this half of this problem, and surviving a reboot is not necessary to ensure and audit privacy.

edit I'll stop. I can understand the flaws in this setup, I don't understand why you think it isn't possible/wouldn't solve the problem.

you cannot store the history in memory and survive a reboot, unless you write the memory to disk, then read into memory from disk on boot, but even then the history is being stored on disk and so is recoverable. surviving a reboot is necessary since the point of storing history is to make it accessible later, otherwise you would use incog/private mode, or stronger. I don't know what it is you think I don't think is possible

>surviving a reboot is necessary since the point of storing history is to make it accessible later, otherwise you would use incog/private mode, or stronger.

What actual evidence do you have that incognito mode is wiping the history at session end?

I did not say that, I said it doesn't store history

It stores history though, go log into any site in incognito mode. It has the same problem your original post highlights, and is an example of a situation where your history not surviving a reboot would not be an issue.

of course it doesn't actively store history. it doesn't wipe the storage medium so may leave a trace, but that's different. if a browser says it is wiping then there should be proof of this, instead of the "just trust us" stance which the article rightly highlights as dangerous