HTC Android Devices Screenshotting Your Browsing?

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Posted By: Mitchell Oke

Tonight I was reading an interesting article on The Boy Genius Report about a curious quirk with the HTC Sense UI on the DROID Incredible. As it turns out, to display those neat previews of websites in the UI the browser is taking screenshots of the site. Doesn’t sound so unsurprising does it?

What is odd is the way that the phone is storing those screenshots for future reference. According to BGR, these screenshots are stored on the phone’s internal storage drive where they are easily viewed in any picture viewing application. What’s worse is they are NOT deleted if you do a full reset on the phone. Bit of a privacy concern should you sell the phone without deleting these files!

HTC Android Devices Screenshotting Your Browsing?

This issue does not seem to be isolated to the HTC DROID Incredible either. I took at look on the memory card in my HTC Desire using the free ASTRO file browser and sure enough the same “.bookmark_thumb1” folder complete with a visual archive of my browsing history was present.

HTC Android Devices Screenshotting Your Browsing?

So be warned, erasing your browsing history or even resetting the phone won’t completely remove the sites you’ve visited!

[from Boy Genius Report]

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About the Author

Mitchell Oke
Mitchell is a video producer and director working with Australia's leading motoring news sites and car companies. He's always on the go with a camera in hand. With a Bachelor of Creative Technology (Digital Video Production), Mitchell's worked for News Limited, CarAdvice.com and as a freelancer for many years.

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9 Comments on "HTC Android Devices Screenshotting Your Browsing?"

  1. Alison | June 17, 2010 at 9:06 am |

    Yep! Found it on my HTC Hero running 1.6 too!

  2. doogald | June 17, 2010 at 10:50 am |

    On the Eris running 2.1 as well, though, of course, it’s on SD, as the Eris lacks internal storage.

  3. Joel McLaughlin | June 17, 2010 at 12:18 pm |

    Hmm. When you flash it with a privious update, doesn’t that clear them out? I bet it does.

  4. doogald | June 17, 2010 at 2:01 pm |

    No, it doesn’t replace them with a reflash. Flashing doesn’t touch SD card storage (or the equivalent on the Incredible). You need to either format the SD Card, attach to a PC and erase with the external storage mounted to the PC, or erase using a tool like Astro (which is the app in the first screenshot above.)

    Interestingly, I had two folders with web page thumbnail images in them on my SD Card. I’m not all that worried – there is nothing sensitive that I have surfed to on my phone – buy I ended up erasing them all anyway.

  5. gadgetfreaks | June 17, 2010 at 2:22 pm |

    HTC Android Devices Screenshoting Your Browsing? #gadgets http://bit.ly/bvvzUj

  7. Giant Gizmo | June 17, 2010 at 3:01 pm |

    HTC Android Devices Screenshoting Your Browsing? http://bit.ly/cjG4GU

  8. dino | June 17, 2010 at 3:09 pm |

    RT @GearDiarySite: HTC Android Devices Screenshoting Your Browsing? http://goo.gl/fb/XGkLH

  9. Breaking Gadget News | June 17, 2010 at 10:05 pm |

    HTC Android Devices Screenshoting Your Browsing? http://bit.ly/aDyqzi via http://topicfire.com/Gadget

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