(a class="quickBrowserEscape ..." target="_blank" href="https://www.google.ca/") Need to leave site for your safety? Quick Escape
  $('.quickBrowserEscape').on('click', function () {
      document.body.style.opacity = 0;
      document.title = 'New Tab';
      window.open('https://www.weather.gc.ca/canada_e.html', '_blank');
      window.location.replace($('.quickBrowserEscape').attr('href')); // removes current page session DOES NOT WORK IN IE
      return false;
  });

I am 100% sure that some do, thanks to firsthand life. And any doing it, is enough to get people dead, even if 99% don't. And yes, CS majors can be abusers, too.

[0] https://www.esafety.gov.au/key-topics/domestic-family-violen...

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/09/15/34...

It’s so prevalent it even has a name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalkerware

Don’t underestimate an abuser’s ability to find a way.

The thing that still works is the back button after the redirection to Google, and you can still un-close the tab with Ctr-Shf-T which pops the Google page with back history intact. They have "cache-control: max-age=0" which probably should be changed to "cache-control: no-store". Still, the back button has the history if the user clicked links. Improvements could be:

- Recommend the usage of incognito mode.

- Blank the page immediately with "document.body.innerHTML=''" before the page replacement, as the replacement alone can have a delay and the abuser could see a glimpse of the police page. Blanking is immediate.

That's what the "document.body.style.opacity = 0;" is for. Though I agree emptying out the body is probably better.

Currently they're going from a "not 100% bright website" to "very much 100% bright website" and the flash in people's faces will be relatively obvious, if the other person been trying to hide websites themselves. I've heard.

All I knew was the button makes it quit the game so my 6 year old interpretation was that it must be something you press when you get to the final boss and are too scared?

One day I played for an hour straight trying to get to the boss part of the game but it never came.

This is a good idea that deserves to be across all Police, Help, Domestic Violence, 911, Suicide Hotline, etc sites across all countries.

Been there for probably decades, yet another thing mostly known to/used by "advanced" users.

So if accidentally clicking some link from some other app that auto opens the default browser it's a PITA to get FF for Android to forget about it.

E.g. go to govt.nz and scroll to the bottom. There's a little icon of a computer that opens a popup element inside the page.

It gives information for victims of domestic violence and abuse.

Another thing that looks awesome, from a public service perspective, the zero data (phone plan) offer. From what it sounds like you don't have to pay for data on your phone plan: https://www.govt.nz/browse/engaging-with-government/no-data-...

That is public service! Well done.

It is important to make it as easy as possible to get to the main content of the site.

This is doubly an issue, as browsers think hiding the http and www is super cool.

So in modern times, you'd never know if the non www was borked or not. It'd just seem slower, especially with a packet drop.

Ideally, you'd want to know there's an issue, not mask it. For example, by updating your bookmark, instead of saying "this site is slow every time".

I wonder of we'll just stop selling forks, because expecting users to learn a tool is verboden. In truth, it is the ridiculous change to tools for no reason which is the issue. Redesigning the UI almost yearly, moving menu items, changing menu item names, and other absurdities. Apparently this is all sensible, whilst expecting the user to know https vs http, and www is absolutely bonkers, and we must help and protect them from this horrible weight of knowledge.

> If you are experiencing family violence, don't worry, the information within this pop-up won't appear in your browser's history.

Pages like Banks or Council websites have it in their footer, so people can lookup information without it appearing in their history

If you need to hide your browsing history from an abusive partner, it would be more secure to use incognito mode and hit Alt+F4 when you need to escape. Unfortunately, Chrome renders incognito windows in dark mode by default. If you're normally on light mode, the transition is extremely conspicuous. Edge and Firefox do the same. It's as if all browser vendors have colluded to make it difficult to browse in secret.

browser.theme.dark-private-windows. Set to false, and you're set.

Many of the perceived issues come from (I'll say it) corrupt judges who let out career petty criminals on a bail-less "promise to appear." Some officers report arresting the same person twice in one shift.

At least it's not TPS, where the chief likes to protect officers who commit perjury in the name of framing an innocent man for a Sergeant's suicide.

Do you mean something you verified is happening or something you assumed is happening? You can go look at the site OP linked and find out what is happening and if it's a "major security issue". In this case, after user click/intervention, it renames the current history entry to "New Tab". This is not a security issue at all.

This is known and commonly used -- since 1996. What's the risk? You can't change records about other domains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

"I did my best" is no excuse for this critical failure to deliver as advertised.

This fail is a horrifying abuse facilitator.

Not what I asked but I'm glad you're doing okay! I share your concerns.

There's this nice blog [3] that explains why they chose Shift instead of other keys, and also gives a nice overview of the pattern.

[1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu... [2] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa... [3] https://beeps.website/blog/2024-10-09-why-govuk-exit-this-pa...

Windows Sticky Keys entered the room.

And then the spamming of the communication that would follow.

Those pre-canned German voices were so great.

- Escape is simply unusable.

- Alt alone leaves the viewport and goes to menu, making further keypresses unregistered

- control is inconsistently placed on keyboards (e.g. laptops) which they don't say directly in the blog, makes extra sense if you recall it suggests not using devices the abuser might be admin/monitoring (public devices, friend devices, etc). It also is highly selected by other assistive technology products just like sticky keys.

They also recognized the issue... And tested it against JAWS and using it with on-screen keyboards

Seems they were very thorough.

0: https://beeps.website/blog/2024-10-09-why-govuk-exit-this-pa...

Note: this is the same link as in the grandparent post

But having a stray sticky keys window open is not too conspicuous

I feel like if I was kidnapped in some person's vehicle and had my phone I'd be dialing 911 and using the keypad to signal I need help in morse code

I wouldn't be browsing the police department website for an e-mail address

You can try to argue this down and reason about it all you want, but it's still a bad default regardless of how it's presented to the user. It's also bad design because it conflicts with similar defaults such as the shortcut to open the camera (press power button twice), silencing an incoming call (press once), etc. People may also press multiple times when the phone seems unresponsive.

You'd expect the resurgence of bad defaults to be motivated by marketing or something, but this one is just outright stupidity.

There's a part of me that is fairly convinced this was added as an afterthought after much internal whining by someone at google with a checklist insisting that android must support some easily accessible emergency feature. This was then deliberately chosen to make the feature look bad, and the users are victims of office politics.

> Interruption page

> Create a page to explain Exit this page to users.

> You must show this page after the start point of your service, but before the page where the user will see the Exit this page button for the first time.

> On longer services, you might need more than one interruption page.

> As a result of advertising people being bastards,

The gov.uk Design Team are a treasure.

The whole blog is! I do enjoy the furry, aro-ace, agender, otherkin, machinekin and plural-system subcultures.

Engineering (as with so many professions) is about so much more than just shipping features as quickly as possible, and it pleases me when I see fellow engineers taking care and showing thorough consideration over the potential impact of their design decisions on people from all walks of life and circumstances.

It's good that a police department has chosen to do this with the misfeature, but the fact that there are non-abusive applications is not an excuse.

This pattern is definitely better than most and it is refreshing seeing they put some resources into it. In my professional experience, organisations often chose the "a link to another site like google is fine" option to save money and time while still getting to boast about their security culture.

One thing I have not found much research on however, but would love to hear about, is the effect of these kinds of patterns on the user's speed and choice of actions and how that effects outcomes. What I mean by that is, say someone is visiting the site on their phone and an adversary walks into the room. Most people these days know the fastest way to leave a page at short notice - maybe the home button/gesture, maybe swipe to another open app. Does having a big red button that introduces a new choice help them, or add to the cognitive bandwidth needed to handle the situation?

Remember, by definition the type of situations that this component is intended to help with are going to be stressful and likely have little to no warning; the person is going to walk in the room and the user has moments to act.

What is going to lead to measurably better outcomes; a big red button that the user needs to read, understand and move their finger/hand to, or their own knowledge of their own device's most efficient escape mechanisms?

This isn't meant as a criticism of the component. I am just genuinely curious as to what the best tool to assist folks in this situation is? We are talking about real people with real fears and the possibility of very bad outcomes.

The other site someone mentioned (https://www.thetrevorproject.org/) doesn't have that issue.

Why don't they inform users about how to properly use private mode, which works with any website, instead of rolling their own solution, which the user has to learn just for that one website?

On top of that, informing users requires them to open up the website in the first place… leaving it in… the history.

A quick wipe and that didn’t happen. Works wonders.

This page serves the 0.01% most vulnerable.

For example, there is a favicon cache in firefox.

If you query favicons.sqlite in your profile directory:

    select * from moz_pages_w_icons order by id desc limit 10;

Because same methods can also used by bad actors for deceptive and spammy actions and we are not allowed to have nice things ever.

Therefore Google has something against messing with browser navigation state back button behavior and history such actions usually got demoted in rankings.

I think it's also fine for all sort of marginal and ephemeral actions that should not spam the browser history, like panning over a map or how far you scrolled down a page, but want to end up back there on reload and shares possibly.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/04/back-butto...

https://1800respect.org.au/sunny

If you ever call 911 and order a pizza, many of the dispatchers are trained to recognize that as "I am in danger and I need an officer to come to the house immediately. The person threatening me can hear this conversation."

It works b/c it gives you a plausible reason to give your address to someone over the phone and they can give you an ETA which is also plausible of "the pizza guy will be here in 20 minutes" etc.

But in testing, I found that history deletion was not possible everywhere. I opted to open a new tab with a harmless google search, so that the history would not exist in that tab. Meanwhile, the original tab is also redirected to a new page.

I'm going to investigate what the UK site did to look for any potential improvements I can make.