Protect you patrons' privacy with IE8's InPrivate Browsing

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) has been released, and while it is unlikely to attract many converts from competing browsers, it is a compelling upgrade for current users of IE7. In addition to much-improved security and compatibility, IE8 has many new features to recommend it for staff use. Among my personal favorites:
- Accelerators which can perform a variety of tasks upon text that you highlight: search, map, translate, etc.
- Web slices, sort of mini-RSS feeds for view dynamic pages without visiting the actual sites (e.g., tracking an eBay auction)
- Color-coded tabs to better keep track of which sites tabs were opened from.
A full description of all the new features, as well as the IE8 installer download, can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx.

Among all these personalized, customized options, however, is one feature that actually benefits the anonymous public computer user: InPrivate Browsing. InPrivate mode removes all traces of the user's online activity when the browser session has ended:

- New cookies are not stored
- New history entries are not recorded
- New temporary Internet files are deleted
- Form data is not saved
- Passwords are not saved
- Addresses typed into the address bar are not stored
- Queries entered into the search box are not stored
- Visited links are not stored

To more fully protect patrons' privacy, public access computers would ideally run Internet Explorer with this privacy feature always turned on, but there is no way (short of multiple registry hacks) to make InPrivate the default startup mode. The next best thing is to replace your standard browser shortcuts with ones that will launch InPrivate sessions.

To modify an existing IE8 shortcut for basic InPrivate browsing, right-click on the shortcut, select Properties, and append "-private" to the "Target" command. Typically, that command would then look like this:
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -private
A minor problem with this syntax is that the browser will start with an internal "splash" page that notifies the user of InPrivate mode. While this is useful for a single user, it's not really necessary - and might be confusing - to PAC user. So to bypass this screen, just add the URL of your home page to the command line when you modify the shortcut(s), e.g.:
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -private http://www.cmrls.org

Be aware that Windows' built-in icon for Internet Explorer is not a shortcut, but rather a system object. (You can tell because it lacks the tell-tale arrow.) As such, it cannot be modified, so you will want to remove it from the Desktop:

Windows XP: Control Panel Display Desktop Customize desktop
Windows Vista: Control Panel Personalization Change desktop icons
In both cases, simple remove the check next to the Internet Explorer icon.