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macOS Web Page Access History

superscape

superscape

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 12, 2008
937
223
East Riding of Yorkshire, UK
Hi,

Does anyone know if there is a method of viewing a user's web page viewing history in Yosemite? I'm thinking of some clever Terminal based command, perhaps using some clever DNS related stuff...

Any ideas?

Thanks
 
Depends really on what you want to do and what your access is to the machine. Easiest way would be to find the Safari history file and look in that
 
What is the problem with the method that you linked to?

Why are you trying to do whatever you're trying to do (there may be a better / easier way.)

IE, maybe Little Snitch would be good for what you want, depending on what it is you want to do:
http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/
 
The problem with the method I linked to is that it doesn't seem to work on Yosemite.

Well, the background is that web access for certain types of site *should* be restricted for all users here by means of WebSense (yes, yes, I hate it too...). However, we suspect that a user has found a way to circumvent it and is accessing questionable material. We're not sure how given that the Macs are pretty well locked down. Possibly not as well as we'd thought.

First I'd like to be able to trawl the logs of sites accessed on the Mac in question. The user will probably be smart enough to delete their Safari history and/or use private browsing, so I'm gambling that there may be more obscure records of web access lurking on the Mac that they may have forgotten about.
 
Maybe you can setup your router to log the sites being connected to. For example, my current home router is a Netgear WNDR3700. It allows me to set blocked sites, and also log various actions. For example it can log attempts to access blocked sites. Enterprise or business routers may have even more extensive logging capabilities.


Does the user in question have admin access to the computer in question? If so, you may always be at a disadvantage. If not, consider configuring their network access to use proxies, then locking that pane. This is done in:
System Preferences > Network > INTERFACE > Advanced > Proxies

The INTERFACE is either wifi or ethernet, depending on how the network is accessed.

The two proxies for web access are Web Proxy (HTTP) and Secure Web Proxy (HTTPS). It shouldn't be difficult to find articles on how to setup proxies; this isn't uncommon in an enterprise setting.
 
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