Deleting database objects under Manage Website Date

Question

Level 1

16 points

Deleting database objects under Manage Website Date

Several websites have placed database objects on my MacBook Pro which are not removed under the "Manage Website Data" privacy option under Safari Preferences.

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on May 7, 2017 6:46 AM

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Answer 1

dominic23

Level 10

84,018 points

May 7, 2017 6:52 AM in response to brucesimonds

Delete Databases and Local Storage items

Backup your Mac.

Quit Safari.

Hold the Option key on the keyboard down and click the “Go”menu in the Finder menu bar.

Choose “Library” from the dropdown.

Scroll down the list.

Click open the Safari folder.

Scroll down the list and click open the “Databases” folder.

Click open the “IndexedDB folder”.

If you find the items there, right click and choose “Move to Trash”

or select all and move to Trash.

Scroll down the list and click open the “Local Storage” folder

Right click the items you want to remove and choose “Move to Trash”.

Restart your Mac, launch Safari holding the shift key on the keyboard down and test.

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Answer 2

dominic23

Level 10

84,018 points

May 7, 2017 11:41 AM in response to brucesimonds

weather dot com website data can come from Notification Center weather widget.

As a test, I just visited canon.com and landsend.com sites.

Pertinent data was stored locally.

I selected those data items, removed those twice and relaunched the Safari.

They were gone.

Do you have these sites bookmarked and added to Favorites folders?

Check the History folder.

Click "History" in the Safari menu bar and then "Show All History"

Enter the search term in the search box at the top right corner.

When the items show up, select and delete those.

I have never seen these data items show up in Webkit folder.

These cookies are not dangerous.

http://www.thesafemac.com/the-myth-of-the-dangerous-cookie/

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Answer 3

brucesimonds Author

Level 1

16 points

May 8, 2017 6:22 AM in response to dominic23

I discovered that the file under Library>Safari>Databases if created when you add an item to the website bag or when you log into your account, depending on the website.

I was able to remove the database items under Safari>Preferences>Privacy>Manage Website Data by doing the following:

Add an item to the website bag and/or log into your website account.

Go to Library>Safari>Databases and delete the file created for the website.

Empty the website bag and log out of your website account and close the website window.

Go to Safari>Preferences>Privacy>Manage Website Data, select the website item and press Remove. The item removed should not reappear in the list.

I did this successfully with Landsend.com, Jet.com and Canon.com. The trick seems to be to delete the database file from Library and then remove it from Manage Website Data. Not sure why, but it seems to work.

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Answer 4

brucesimonds Author

Level 1

16 points

May 7, 2017 8:29 AM in response to dominic23

The offending database files were not present under _IndexedDB, only ones related to the forum. I deleted all these files. The offending database file were also not present under Local Storage but I deleted all that were there anyway. After restarting my Mac and launching Safari (while holding the shift key) I tested "Manage Website Data" The offending database files were still there. After clicking "remove all", they reappeared as before. The databases are canon.com, jet.com, weather.com and landsend.com.

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Answer 5

brucesimonds Author

Level 1

16 points

May 7, 2017 3:08 PM in response to dominic23

Items which cannot be removed are database items.

The jet ands landsend items were created after placing an order on line from the site. Canon appeared after downloading files needed to install new Canon printer.

These items don't appear under History or Favorites.