Most people don't realize that just about everything you do on your computer is in fact recorded in various forms throughout your computers memory - and it would be a mistake to think that it is only people going to adult websites that need to be concerned about erasing their history. Cookies, cache files and temporary files are only a few of the areas that contain the history of where you have been on the internet. From passwords to banking information, to your pictures and even your email accounts, your history can tell others more about you then you might want them to know. This can range from your kids, your spouse, your boss or even the computer repair guy. ( many computer repair centers have a policy to check for any type of illegal activity on the computers they repair )
In this article, I'll discuss the various steps to erase your user history safely and effectively.
Basic History Cleaning
To erase your basic surfing history, there are several easy ways to delete where you have been. Using these techniques, you can erase websites, pages viewed or entire days right on up to all stored sites that have been viewed.
The easiest way to erase your history is to open your history tab on your internet explorer. Depending on the version of the IE that you are running, this will be typically found on your browser tool bar at the top of your screen. On the newest version of Internet Explorer, you can find it by clicking the gold star in the top left hand corner of your browser.
Click the history button, and the history bar will open on the left side of your screen. You can view your history by site, by date, by order visited and by most visited. Highlight the item you want to delete, and then right click your mouse and a window will open, and you can delete the item or items ( for example, if you highlighted THURSDAY, and then deleted it, all of Thursdays history would be deleted. You can also hit the delete key to delete a highlighted item. Keep in mind that this only deletes your surface history and if someone is determined to see what sites you have visited, there are several other locations we will discuss later on.
If you want to delete your entire history at once, click on the START button at the bottom left hand corner of your screen and then select CONTROL PANEL. Once that window opens, select INTERNET OPTIONS. Under the GENERAL tab, click DELETE and all of your windows history will be deleted. You can also delete your cookies from this same page. ( cookies are stored information to help websites work faster and remember visitors. )
Advanced History Erasing.
What most people don't realize is that there are 11 different areas of your hard drive that store information on your surfing and computer usage habits. The problem is, erasing this history is not a one step task that you can do manually and should not be attempted by anyone without advanced knowledge of the windows data storage system.
Fortunately there are software applications that can safely and quickly erase your history fully - making it completely un-recoverable. Programs such as Winclear and Evidence Nuker are both excellent tools to protect your privacy with just a few clicks.
These applications work by scrubbing all tables and history pockets on your hard drive including your browser cache, temporary folders, data swap files, and a whole lot of other places that are too technical to bother discussing in this article. Both programs allows you to set the erase settings to do a full clear or you can choose which data you want to erase manually. Remember that a full erase will also clear any passwords or stored data, so be sure to write down your data before clearing it off.
You can try both of these programs for free before having to purchase them.
