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Vancouver PD website features Quick Escape button that wipes itself from history

https://vpd.ca/
114•LookAtThatBacon•2h ago

Comments

phillipseamore•1h ago

  (a class="quickBrowserEscape ..." target="_blank" href="https://www.google.ca/") Need to leave site for your safety? Quick Escape
  $('.quickBrowserEscape').on('click', function () {
      document.body.style.opacity = 0;
      document.title = 'New Tab';
      window.open('https://www.weather.gc.ca/canada_e.html', '_blank');
      window.location.replace($('.quickBrowserEscape').attr('href')); // removes current page session DOES NOT WORK IN IE
      return false;
  });
Would recommend picking random URLs from an array.
transitorykris•1h ago
Brilliant feature, well done Vancouver PD. A very serious boss mode. Lotus 1-2-3 wouldn't look quite right here but weather.ca is plausible.
lysace•57m ago
This feature has a long and storied history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key
analog31•12m ago
Amusingly, I just noticed that alt-spacebar-n doesn't hide a window in Ubuntu.
defrost•1h ago
Raises the question of whether browsers should have a [Replace Page, Erase Domain from History] button and hotkey.

This is a good idea that deserves to be across all Police, Help, Domestic Violence, 911, Suicide Hotline, etc sites across all countries.

homebrewer•1h ago
Firefox already has "forget this site", which removes all traces of you ever visiting the site, but it's only available from the history modal.

Been there for probably decades, yet another thing mostly known to/used by "advanced" users.

Springtime•1h ago
What's weird is with Firefox for Android it's so difficult erasing a site from being remembered. Once visited, in my experience, even after deleting the history entry and last closed tabs item it still auto completes the domain in the addressbar (when it didn't before) and the only workaround is a full history wipe (since the Android version offers no granular timeframe like the desktop version).

So if accidentally clicking some link from some other app that auto opens the default browser it's a PITA to get FF for Android to forget about it.

iwontberude•3m ago
Android is a wasteland, not surprised
albeebe1•1h ago
reminds me of boss mode in leisure suit larry 1
marking-time•1h ago
That is an old reference. I bow to the senior geek.
accountrequired•1h ago
sdf commode too :)
zippyman55•1h ago
Respect!
hoherd•1h ago
lemmings.exe also had an immediate quit without warning on the esc key, iirc.
lioeters•26m ago
I think SimCity Classic had a similar feature.
omoikane•9m ago
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key
CarlJW•1h ago
In New Zealand we have a Shielded Site popup at the bottom of all government websites, and many popular privately owned websites too.

E.g. go to govt.nz and scroll to the bottom. There's a little icon of a computer that opens a popup element inside the page.

It gives information for victims of domestic violence and abuse.

herpderperator•1h ago
https://govt.nz isn't a thing, but https://www.govt.nz is.
jagged-chisel•1h ago
The former should forward to the latter.
ceejayoz•49m ago
NASA.gov for many years lacked a no-www version. IIRC it had something to do with the no-www being important internally at the time.
Titan2189•1h ago
Some New Zealand Government / Business sites have a Javascript-based pop-up available called Shielded Site https://shielded.co.nz/

> If you are experiencing family violence, don't worry, the information within this pop-up won't appear in your browser's history.

Pages like Banks or Council websites have it in their footer, so people can lookup information without it appearing in their history

kijin•1h ago
It only replaces the current page, and VPD is not a single-page app. So if you've been clicking around to find something, the previous pages will still be in your history.

If you need to hide your browsing history from an abusive partner, it would be more secure to use incognito mode and hit Alt+F4 when you need to escape. Unfortunately, Chrome renders incognito windows in dark mode by default. If you're normally on light mode, the transition is extremely conspicuous. Edge and Firefox do the same. It's as if all browser vendors have colluded to make it difficult to browse in secret.

CM30•54m ago
Apparently Firefox has a config option to disable this:

browser.theme.dark-private-windows. Set to false, and you're set.

zuzululu•1h ago
its too bad they do very little fighting actual crime same with montreal pd probably two least effective and disliked departments in all of canada
SpecialistK•1h ago
Any large city's PD is going to be controversial. From the experience of people close to me who work with police, the VPD are better run and have more programs like Car 33 than the RCMP in neighbouring jurisdictions.

Many of the perceived issues come from (I'll say it) corrupt judges who let out career petty criminals on a bail-less "promise to appear." Some officers report arresting the same person twice in one shift.

At least it's not TPS, where the chief likes to protect officers who commit perjury in the name of framing an innocent man for a Sergeant's suicide.

rangestransform•1h ago
VPD has become notably more controversial after Jim Chu stepped down, before that it was notable how professional they were for a North American police department
SpecialistK•40m ago
A lot of the first hand experiences I've heard were from around Chu's tenure, so I can't refute that.
protocolture•1h ago
But when the Vancouver PD are beating you up, you wont have time to load the page to locate the quick escape button.
jamal-kumar•1h ago
That's funny, right before this I was just reading about how some idiot I knew from back in the day beat the shit out of some stranger on the SkyTrain for his headphones. Maybe it's time to realize how fucked Vancouver is and that the cops aren't the problem
afavour•26m ago
In 2025 Vancouver had the lowest violent crime rate in 23 years. Not that there’s no crime of course but I don’t see that it really constitutes Vancouver being “fucked”.
lfx•14m ago
Not all crimes are reported in Vancouver. But agree is not as bad as some paints.
mondobe•1h ago
The Trevor Project (LGBTQ support/suicide prevention site) has the same thing, triggered by a hotkey (press ESC three times). https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
hyperhello•59m ago
A website can wipe itself from history? That seems like a major security issue.
jerbearito•44m ago
"That seems like a major security issue."

Do you mean something you verified is happening or something you assumed is happening? You can go look at the site OP linked and find out what is happening and if it's a "major security issue". In this case, after user click/intervention, it renames the current history entry to "New Tab". This is not a security issue at all.

hyperhello•40m ago
Well, it’s right there in the headline that the website wipes itself from history, so I don’t need any realignment of my ability to discern what I’ve read from what I’ve imagined. If all the site is doing is renaming itself New Tab then that sure isn’t newsworthy. Maybe a domestic violence reporting site should just name itself something innocuous in general without the quick escape? But nonetheless, a web site replacing its own history entry with something from another domain sure doesn’t sound secure.
xdkaplan•7m ago
Not to start an argument but in lamence terms, renaming history to "New Tab" is as close to wiping history as a website can manage. Concealing, obfuscating, hiding might have been better words but the non technucal audience would not see an issue with the language. Nuance is important, though and i agree its slightly misleading
vhcr•59m ago
Maybe just use an incognito window?
jojobas•58m ago
The site (vpd.ca) remains in history, just with the name replaced with "New Tab", which the script does just before redirecting. I would be very upset if browsers allowed sites to mess with history.
tacodestroyer•54m ago
this is awesome. i had a similar idea for a women's shelter but this approach is 1000% better and less complicated than mine. bravo!
quirino•31m ago
The gov.uk Design System calls this the "Exit a page quickly" pattern [1], with an associated component [2]. It can be activated by clicking the Shift key three times.

There's this nice blog [3] that explains why they chose Shift instead of other keys, and also gives a nice overview of the pattern.

[1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu... [2] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa... [3] https://beeps.website/blog/2024-10-09-why-govuk-exit-this-pa...

Vancouver PD website features Quick Escape button that wipes itself from history

https://vpd.ca/
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