A Dead Man's Switch to clear your browser history on OSX. Note: Currently only works with Chrome

If she murders me, tell Jean-Ralphio to clear my browser history.

-- Tom Haverford

This is a python script that periodically checks the last time you've used a web browser. If that time is greater than a certain threshold, you are presumed dead, and any browser history is deleted.

Clone this repository to a nice place with

git clone git://github.com/mathisonian/browser-man-switch.git

Move into that directory with cd browser-man-switch and you are ready to start.

This is a command line python program. Run like so:

python history-cleaner.py --chrome --time 7 --daemon

This will cause the process to start in the background as a daemon, clearing your chrome history if chrome isn't used for 7 or more days.

• time - Time in days to wait before assuming you are dead. Can be fractional (eg 7.5). Defaults to 7 days
• chrome - Actively monitor chrome
• firefox - Actively monitor firefox
• safari - Actively monitor safari
• daemon - Run as a background process. Defaults to foreground mode.

If one of chrome, firefox, or safari, is not flagged, chrome will be assumed. You can do any combination of the three.

It is important that you have this setup to run on startup. To do so, add the following to your crontab file (stored in /etc/crontab). Make sure to edit as root.

@reboot python /path/to/history-cleaner.py <options>

• Matthew Conlen, http://www.mathisonian.com

Copyright © 2013 Matthew Conlen

This program is free software. It comes without any warranty, to the extent permitted by applicable law. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the WTFPL, Version 2, as published by Sam Hocevar. See http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ for more details.