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

370 125 8 days 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.

shakna2• 8 days ago

This would also leave intact cookies, local/session storage, indexeddb, caches. All of which abusers do actually check, when controlling their victims.

make3• 8 days ago

I'm sure 99% don't? Unless your abuser is a CS major

otherme123• 8 days ago

A quick check shows that they don't store anything as cookies or any other browser storage.

The thing that still works is the back button after the redirection to Google, and you can still un-close the tab with Ctr-Shf-T which pops the Google page with back history intact. They have "cache-control: max-age=0" which probably should be changed to "cache-control: no-store". Still, the back button has the history if the user clicked links. Improvements could be:

- Recommend the usage of incognito mode.

- Blank the page immediately with "document.body.innerHTML=''" before the page replacement, as the replacement alone can have a delay and the abuser could see a glimpse of the police page. Blanking is immediate.

embedding-shape• 8 days ago

Best would be if they took care to match the overall brightness of the page they redirect to.

Currently they're going from a "not 100% bright website" to "very much 100% bright website" and the flash in people's faces will be relatively obvious, if the other person been trying to hide websites themselves. I've heard.

transitorykris• 8 days 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• 8 days ago

This feature has a long and storied history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key

analog31• 8 days ago

Amusingly, I just noticed that alt-spacebar-n doesn't hide a window in Ubuntu.

derekdahmer• 7 days ago

When I was a little kid I was playing a DOS submarine game which had a Boss Key.

All I knew was the button makes it quit the game so my 6 year old interpretation was that it must be something you press when you get to the final boss and are too scared?

One day I played for an hour straight trying to get to the boss part of the game but it never came.

specproc• 8 days ago

I came here for the boss key

defrost• 8 days 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• 8 days 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• 8 days 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.

albeebe1• 8 days ago

reminds me of boss mode in leisure suit larry 1

marking-time• 8 days ago

That is an old reference. I bow to the senior geek.

accountrequired• 8 days ago

sdf commode too :)

zippyman55• 8 days ago

Respect!

hoherd• 8 days ago

lemmings.exe also had an immediate quit without warning on the esc key, iirc.

lioeters• 8 days ago

I think SimCity Classic had a similar feature.

CarlJW• 8 days 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• 8 days ago

https://govt.nz isn't a thing, but https://www.govt.nz is.

jagged-chisel2• 8 days ago

The former should forward to the latter.

tjpnz• 8 days ago

Stuff has it too.

tom1337890• 8 days ago

Thank You for that. The popup, the monitor icon, being implemented as an iframe popup seems actually effective against browser history and cookies, sessisons, etc. I guess much better then Vancouver PD implementation.

Another thing that looks awesome, from a public service perspective, the zero data (phone plan) offer. From what it sounds like you don't have to pay for data on your phone plan: https://www.govt.nz/browse/engaging-with-government/no-data-...

That is public service! Well done.

Titan2189• 8 days 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

kijin2• 8 days 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• 8 days ago

Apparently Firefox has a config option to disable this:

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

kijin2• 8 days ago

Thanks for the tip, but the usual open-source "you can change it" argument doesn't work in this case. People who like to control other people will interpret any deviation from the expected behavior as an attempt to hide something from them. If you change the defaults, those defaults can no longer serve as your alibi. All the more reason to ship secure defaults!

xp84• 8 days ago

Not enough people know this: in Chrome and Edge, making a Guest window is usually more useful than Incognito. You do it from the profile menu. It’s a throwaway profile, without the various weird special-case behaviors (including the ones websites can detect) that “incognito” has. When you close it, it’s all discarded anyway.

zuzululu• 8 days 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

SpecialistK2• 8 days 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• 8 days 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

protocolture2• 8 days 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• 8 days 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• 8 days 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”.

brailsafe• 8 days ago

Vancouver is fucked in many ways but general safety is not one of them. Quality of life is quite good if one can afford.

protocolture2• 7 days ago

Cops are always the problem everywhere.

mondobe• 8 days 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/

Sidio• 8 days ago

Great execution

hyperhello5• 8 days ago

A website can wipe itself from history? That seems like a major security issue.

jerbearito3• 8 days 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.

hyperhello5• 8 days 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.

vhcr• 8 days ago

Maybe just use an incognito window?

1123581321• 8 days ago

It’s pretty easy to catch someone fumbling with incognito if you can suddenly enter a room. (Not that it wouldn’t also be easy to catch someone clicking this button.)

jojobas• 8 days 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• 8 days 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• 8 days 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...

therein• 8 days ago

It can be activated by clicking the Shift key three times.

Windows Sticky Keys entered the room.

lostlogin3• 8 days ago

Hilarious memories of hitting this when playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

ldoughty• 8 days ago

The blog[0] explains their choices well. The brief highlights:

- Escape is simply unusable.

- Alt alone leaves the viewport and goes to menu, making further keypresses unregistered

- control is inconsistently placed on keyboards (e.g. laptops) which they don't say directly in the blog, makes extra sense if you recall it suggests not using devices the abuser might be admin/monitoring (public devices, friend devices, etc). It also is highly selected by other assistive technology products just like sticky keys.

They also recognized the issue... And tested it against JAWS and using it with on-screen keyboards

Seems they were very thorough.

0: https://beeps.website/blog/2024-10-09-why-govuk-exit-this-pa...

Note: this is the same link as in the grandparent post

wongarsu• 8 days ago

That only activates when pressing shift five times. Which is admittedly likely when trying to press it three times in a panic

But having a stray sticky keys window open is not too conspicuous

xeyownt• 8 days ago

This is nice but how, as a user, do you learn it exists?

ronsor• 8 days ago

They do explain this:

Interruption page
Create a page to explain Exit this page to users.
You must show this page after the start point of your service, but before the page where the user will see the Exit this page button for the first time.
On longer services, you might need more than one interruption page.

ninalanyon2• 8 days ago

That blog entry is a delight to read!

As a result of advertising people being bastards,

The gov.uk Design Team are a treasure.

pdpi• 8 days ago

I'm surprised that the blog doesn't mention what, to me, is the most obvious reason not use Esc — because it's conspicuous as all hell! If somebody's at risk and wants to hide what they're doing, their abuser seeing them repeatedly hit Esc just screams "I'm trying to hide something".

greengreengrass• 8 days ago

Seeing the level of thought that went into user experience design, research, and arguing for the _right_ page to redirect to is such a delight.

Engineering (as with so many professions) is about so much more than just shipping features as quickly as possible, and it pleases me when I see fellow engineers taking care and showing thorough consideration over the potential impact of their design decisions on people from all walks of life and circumstances.

jmward01• 8 days ago

Reminds me of the boss key in a lot of 80's games.

Hizonner• 8 days ago

Not a bad idea, except that *WEB PAGES SHOULD HAVE NEITHER ANY ACCESS TO NOR ANY CONTROL OVER THE HISTORY, PERIOD, AND SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BEAT THE MORONS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS "WEB PLATFORM" BULLSHIT SENSELESS*.

It's good that a police department has chosen to do this with the misfeature, but the fact that there are non-abusive applications is not an excuse.

Cider9986• 8 days ago

It doesn't wipe from history on Vanadium GrapheneOS (likely same on Android Chrome). It does change its icon to Google and open Google and weather websites.

tanbog100• 8 days ago

I've implemented quick exit/escape buttons for a few organisations over the years and have spent a bit of time thinking about the limitations.

This pattern is definitely better than most and it is refreshing seeing they put some resources into it. In my professional experience, organisations often chose the "a link to another site like google is fine" option to save money and time while still getting to boast about their security culture.

One thing I have not found much research on however, but would love to hear about, is the effect of these kinds of patterns on the user's speed and choice of actions and how that effects outcomes. What I mean by that is, say someone is visiting the site on their phone and an adversary walks into the room. Most people these days know the fastest way to leave a page at short notice - maybe the home button/gesture, maybe swipe to another open app. Does having a big red button that introduces a new choice help them, or add to the cognitive bandwidth needed to handle the situation?

Remember, by definition the type of situations that this component is intended to help with are going to be stressful and likely have little to no warning; the person is going to walk in the room and the user has moments to act.

What is going to lead to measurably better outcomes; a big red button that the user needs to read, understand and move their finger/hand to, or their own knowledge of their own device's most efficient escape mechanisms?

This isn't meant as a criticism of the component. I am just genuinely curious as to what the best tool to assist folks in this situation is? We are talking about real people with real fears and the possibility of very bad outcomes.

1e1a• 8 days ago

This feature could be potentially be activated whenever the page is hidden (eg. by pressing the home button), although it would be very annoying for regular users.

vasco2• 8 days ago

Indeed this is mostly performative by the police because the user would switch apps, turn off the phone screen, or any other easier way as you describe.

hluska• 7 days ago

So it works on desktop but it’s performative? I understand that it’s cool to be anti-police now but that’s some really strange reasoning.

dinkelberg• 8 days ago

It doesn't seem to work in Safari on iPhone correctly. When I click on the Back button (from weather.gc.ca), it goes back to the Vancouver PD site. Therefore I do not think that it is built well.

The other site someone mentioned (https://www.thetrevorproject.org/) doesn't have that issue.

phillipseamore2• 7 days ago

They use window.location.replace(URL)

Anamon• 2 days ago

On that page, it doesn't work reliably in Firefox on Android. If the triple-tap is performed on text, it often just selects the word without navigating away.

tangenter• 8 days ago

Aye, the world we live in.

IdiotSavage• 8 days ago

Isn't this exactly why browsers implemented "private mode"?

Why don't they inform users about how to properly use private mode, which works with any website, instead of rolling their own solution, which the user has to learn just for that one website?

RevEng• 8 days ago

Private mode assumes you choose in advance. If you are suddenly approached, you can trigger the quick exit without any prior planning and it can be done inconspicuously.

gouggoug• 8 days ago

Because most users aren’t computer savvy and victims in a hurry probably don’t have time for a lesson.

On top of that, informing users requires them to open up the website in the first place… leaving it in… the history.

simonjgreen• 8 days ago

They could be in a situation where that’s not available such as a child’s phone with parental controls or a managed work device that has it locked out.

runtime_lens• 8 days ago

I like that this treats as a UX problem not just a technical one. The challenge is making sure people know the feature exists before they need it. An escape mechanism isn't very useful if you only discover it after you're already in a stressful situation.

SSLy2• 8 days ago

the favicon isn't removed

aembleton• 8 days ago

It is in Firefox. Which browser are you using?

SSLy2• 7 days ago

Indeed Firefox

pwdisswordfishq• 8 days ago

Isn't that what "incognito mode" is for? Why should random websites have the capability to wipe themselves from history?

FabCH• 8 days ago

Because people who need help from the police and have to hide their tracks might not be completely technically literate. Or indeed fully literate at all.

This page serves the 0.01% most vulnerable.

xnorswap• 8 days ago

While this is a great idea that no-doubt does help some people, beware this doesn't clean up all traces in the browser, and private/incognito is better at not keeping a history.

For example, there is a favicon cache in firefox.

If you query favicons.sqlite in your profile directory:

    select * from moz_pages_w_icons order by id desc limit 10;

Then you can see a recent history that isn't cleared up when you just clear history like this.

mxfh• 8 days ago

Just hope this does not get flagged as spam by google and demotes useful sites, so they are not found to begin with, which would make this useful feature a net negative.

Because same methods can also used by bad actors for deceptive and spammy actions and we are not allowed to have nice things ever.

Therefore Google has something against messing with browser navigation state back button behavior and history such actions usually got demoted in rankings.

I think it's also fine for all sort of marginal and ephemeral actions that should not spam the browser history, like panning over a map or how far you scrolled down a page, but want to end up back there on reload and shares possibly.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/04/back-butto...

IgorPartola• 8 days ago

https://sbaproject.org/ has the same thing. Sometimes visiting a website can have very real and very violent consequences. Thankfully these folks know what they are doing.

JensRantil• 8 days ago

This type of button is very common on websites for women of domestic abuse.

sunnybeetroot• 8 days ago

Reminds me of the Australian domestic violence website. It also has an app that quick escapes to a weather app.

https://1800respect.org.au/sunny

alexpotato• 7 days ago

PSA:

If you ever call 911 and order a pizza, many of the dispatchers are trained to recognize that as "I am in danger and I need an officer to come to the house immediately. The person threatening me can hear this conversation."

It works b/c it gives you a plausible reason to give your address to someone over the phone and they can give you an ETA which is also plausible of "the pizza guy will be here in 20 minutes" etc.

torgeros• 7 days ago

Yeah and it crashes my browser xDDD

8organicbits• 7 days ago

Does this actually remove from history? The feature says escape, but the back button and history still show the page (Firefox on Android).

skoskie• 7 days ago

I built something similar at https://ictsos.org, which is a human trafficking nonprofit.

But in testing, I found that history deletion was not possible everywhere. I opted to open a new tab with a harmless google search, so that the history would not exist in that tab. Meanwhile, the original tab is also redirected to a new page.

I'm going to investigate what the UK site did to look for any potential improvements I can make.

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

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