How can I disable private browsing/incognito mode in browser X?

Question

Search results for this question contain nothing but arguments for and against. Please take those up in another forum. I want to know is there an option, extension or hack to disable private browsing mode in each of the following browsers?

• Apple Safari v?+ (Private Browsing)
• Google Chrome v1+ (Incognito Mode)
• Internet Explorer v8+ (InPrivate Browsing)
• Mozilla Firefox v3.5+ (Private Browsing)

OS-agnostic solutions preferred.

Depending on the use-case, alternate tools like traffic monitoring, OpenDNS or NetNanny might be valid, but they are not relevant to this question.

Answer 1

OK I'm presuming you;re using Windows...

In Internet Explorer:

Click Start, Run. (or in the search bar for Vista or W7) Type GPEDIT.MSC and hit ENTER Go to:

User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Internet Explorer / InPrivate

Turn off InPrivate Browsing:

In Firefox:

Open up your hard drive (c://)(or in the search bar for Vista or W7) through the 'start; run' route. go into program files, go to mozilla firefox, then components.

NOW, make sure you are searching for all files under 'files of type'.

Then, you will be able to see "nsPrivateBrowsingService.js"

Right click and DELETE!!!

That won't remove the controls, but they won't work any more. If you want to hide those Menu items: Add this code to userChrome.css below the @namespace line. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Editing_configuration#How_to_edit_configuration_files

#sanitizeSeparator, #privateBrowsingItem, #sanitizeItem {display:none!important;}
#privateBrowsingAutoStart {display:none!important;}

Source: http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=en-US&comments_parentId=378652&forumId=1

I'm unable to help you on the Safari one as I have never really used it for any length of time and I'm unable to find any references to turning it off in Chrome.

Edit - Creating a DWord reigstry key called IncognitoEnabled with a value of 0 in the registry folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome seems to disable incognito browsing. Thanks to Imomata for that one.

Answer 2

You can disable Incognito Mode in Chrome with a simple registry tweak. In regedit.exe, create the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome, with a single dword value, called IncognitoEnabled and with value 0.

When you next start Chrome the New Incognito Window option will be greyed out.

Or you can create .reg file by opening up notepad, pasting the below in and saving it as eg incognito.reg. Once saved just double click the reg file to inport it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome]
"IncognitoEnabled"=dword:00000000

Answer 3

No, I don’t think so.

I checked firefoxs about:config which does not have any such option.

You can’t disable them, thus can only remove them by recompiling the application from source, and excluding it there. Ofc. this is not possible for non-open-sourced browsers and depending on your application of the software also not allowed by license.