Keeping Your Information Safe

• Managing cookies
• Temporarily accepting cookies to access a website
• Accepting cookies only for the current browsing session
• Emptying your cache
• Removing your history
• Preventing Camino from saving passwords for a site
• Resetting Camino
• Determining if the website you are visiting is secure
• Changing preferences for security warnings and certificates
• Importing certificates
• Accessing websites that require a personal certificate
• Phishing and malware protection
• Blocking outdated plug-ins
• Keeping Camino up-to-date

 

Managing cookies

Websites store “cookies” on your computer to facilitate transactions with the site. In most cases, cookies are harmless. For some websites, you must allow cookies to be stored in order to use the site.

If you are concerned about cookies, you can configure how you want Camino to handle them.

To configure Camino’s cookie behavior, open the Preferences and choose the Privacy pane. Camino can accept all cookies, accept cookies only from sites you visit (meaning cookies from advertisers and other third-party websites will be blocked), or deny all cookies. Additionally, Camino includes the ability to ask the user every time a cookie is offered, allowing the user the opportunity to choose which cookies are accepted.

To see the cookies you have accepted, click Show Cookies…. You can then view and remove cookies, and, using the Action button, add a website to the list of sites which you always allow or prevent from storing cookies.

Finally, you can choose Edit Exceptions List… to see which sites you have chosen to always allow cookies from or to always deny cookies from, despite your other cookie preferences.

If you have allowed or denied cookies from a number of servers at a site (for example, several ad-servers from the same company), you can select one of those servers in the list and choose Expand Exception of All of site from the Action button’s menu to expand your exception to all servers from that site.

Temporarily accepting cookies to access a website

Sometimes you may need to accept cookies in order to view a website, so you need to temporarily accept cookies or un-block the website.

• If you have Don’t accept any cookies selected, simply select Accept cookies from any site to accept the cookies and reload the page.
• If you have Camino set to ask you which cookies to accept and have blocked cookies from the page, you will need to click Edit Exceptions List… and change the setting for the website from “Deny” to “Allow” before trying to reload the page.

After visiting the site, you can return your settings to the previous values, and you may want to remove any cookies the site has set by clicking the Show Cookies… button and deleting cookies from that website.

Accepting cookies only for the current browsing session

Some people prefer to accept cookies from sites but to make the cookies expire at the end of the browsing session (when quitting Camino).

• Select Ask me before accepting each cookie in the Privacy preference pane; when you visit a site that wants to set a cookie, a sheet with several options appears.
• Click the Allow for Session button, and Camino will accept the cookie but delete it when quitting. If you have the Remember this decision? box checked, Camino will automatically accept the cookie without showing you the sheet the next time you visit the site, and Camino will still delete the cookie the when you quit.
• If you change your mind about a site and want to have Camino keep the site’s cookies (to make cookies from a site act like normal cookies again and persist through quitting), you will need to click Edit Exceptions List… button in the preference pane and change the setting for the website from “Allow for Session” to “Deny” or “Allow” in the “Policy” column.

If you wish to make Camino automatically delete all new cookies when quitting, without Camino asking you to accept the cookies (Camino will instead automatically accept all cookies), please see the Hidden Preferences page.

Emptying your cache

Cache is a collection of versions of pages and images you’ve viewed; Camino stores these versions on your disk. Keeping cached versions allows websites to load more quickly the next time you visit those sites. Removing your cache deletes all of these visited versions of pages.

There are three ways to clear your cache. First, you can select Empty Cache… from the Camino application menu. Alternatively, you can select the Empty Cache… button in the History preference pane. Finally, you can use the keyboard shortcut ⌘⌥E to empty your cache.

Removing your history

Your history is a record of the websites you’ve browsed. This record is searchable from the History Manager and also is the basis for auto-completion of URLs in your location bar.

To reset Camino’s history, go to the Preferences and choose the History pane. Select the Clear History… button. This will reset any record of the pages you have visited. You can also clear Camino’s history by choosing the Clear History… item at the bottom of the History menu.

Preventing Camino from saving passwords for a site

You may visit some sites where you do not want Camino to save your password in the Keychain. After logging in, Camino will display a sheet asking if you wish to save your password; if you do not want Camino to save this information, click the Never Save for this Website button. If you later decide to allow Camino to save the password, you can click the Edit Keychain Exclusions… button in the preference pane to see a list of sites where Camino will not save passwords. Click on the site for which you wish to allow Camino to save the password and then press delete (or choose Remove from the Action button’s menu) to remove the exception. Then visit the site and log in again to allow Camino to save the password.

Resetting Camino

Resetting Camino will erase your browsing history, empty the cache, clear downloads, clear all cookies and site cookie permissions, and remove any passwords Camino saved in your Keychain. This action cannot be undone.

To reset Camino, simply go to the Camino application menu and select Reset Camino….

Determining if the website you are visiting is secure

When information sent to and from a website you are visiting is encrypted (“secure”), Camino indicates this by turning the location bar yellow and adding a lock icon (see screenshot below).

This does not mean that Camino guarantees that the website you are visiting is actually the site it claims to be; it only means that any data you send to the website will be encrypted to prevent other people from seeing the data on the way from your Mac to the website.

Sometimes a secure website may contain some insecure elements, usually images, frames, or iframes. By default Camino will warn you if the page you are about to visit contains a mix of secure and unsecure content, and the lock icon in the location bar will be “unlocked” to indicate the page content is not completely encypted.

In some cases, forms you complete on a secure website may be submitted in a non-secure way or to an insecure website. Camino is set to display a message when this is about to happen, allowing you to stop the form submission if you are concerned about the security of your information.

Camino will also warn you if there are problems with the certificate of the secure site you are visiting. This means that while connection to the site is encrypted, but the operator of the site is not trusted, or you may not actually be connected to the site you think you are visiting. In these cases, Camino will display an error page rather than displaying the website. Unless you are an expert in internet security protocols, you should not attempt to override the error page and visit the site, and legitimate websites should never ask you to override the error page. (An error may be caused by server misconfiguration and may therefore be temporary, so you can try to visit the site again at a later time and see whether Camino still displays an error page or not.)

You can find more detailed information about the security and encryption level of the site you are viewing by choosing the Page Info item from the Edit menu or, if the site is secure, by clicking on the lock icon in the location bar and choosing one of the options in the context menu.

Changing preferences for security warnings and certificates

If you don’t want to see warnings about insecure content or if you want to change other security preferences, choose Preferences… from the Camino application menu and open the Security preference pane. Uncheck the options for warnings you no longer wish to receive. You can also see the certificates that Camino recognizes by clicking the Show Certificates button in the preference pane.

If you have added any certificate exceptions in order to visit a site with a certificate problem, you can see or delete these exceptions by clicking on the Edit Certificate Exceptions… button in the Security preference pane.

Importing certificates

Unfortunately Camino cannot currently access personal or website certificates stored in the Keychain. If you have personal or website certificates you need to use in Camino, you can import them into Camino’s list of certificates. Choose Preferences… from the Camino application menu, open the Security preference pane, and then click on the Show Certificates button. If you have a personal certificate, click on the My Certificates item in the left-hand pane and then choose Import… from the Action menu (the “gear” button). You may be able to import website or certificate authority (CA) certificates directly from the web if the website or CA provides links to their certificates. If you have copies of these certificates on your Mac, however, you can import them in the same manner as personal certificates, by clicking on the appropriate certificate type in the left-hand column in the Certificates window and then choosing Import… from the Action menu.

Accessing websites that require a personal certificate

Some websites require you to provide a personal certificate in order to access them. By default, Camino will use the first personal certificate it finds. If you have more than one personal certificate and need to be able to choose which certificate to use when accessing a given site, you can have Camino ask you which one to use by selecting Ask me which to use in the Certificates section of the Security preference pane.

Phishing and malware protection

Camino includes built-in phishing and malware protection to help keep you safe from malicious websites. This protection uses the Google Safe Browsing service; it is enabled by default and is controlled by the Warn me when visiting potentially malicious sites checkbox in the Security preference pane. For more information about phishing, malware, and this feature, and its limitations, see our phishing and malware protection documentation.

If you wish to learn why the Google Safe Browsing service has blocked a website as a suspected malware site, enter its address (URL) below to visit the site’s Safe Browsing Diagnostic page:

Blocking outdated plug-ins

Outdated plug-ins can be a source of danger on the internet, so it is important to regularly check your installed plug-ins to ensure you have the latest updates. As an added layer of protection, Camino 2.1 will block certain versions of plug-ins because those versions have serious security holes. If you have one of the blocked versions of any of these plug-ins installed, in most cases you should visit the plug-in’s website and install the latest version of that plug-in.

Keeping Camino up-to-date

Keeping your web browser updated is an important part of keeping your information secure while on the internet. The Camino Project issues regular security and stability updates for the browser. By default Camino checks once a day to see if there is an updated version available; this check is controlled by the Check for Camino updates automatically checkbox in the General preference pane. The Camino Project urges all users to keep this preference enabled. You can also check for updates manually by selecting Check for Updates… from the Camino application menu.