Why Deleting Or Clearing Your Browser History Is Not Enough

Deleting or clearing your browser history is not enough to prevent other people from seeing (accidentally or otherwise) what you have been looking at online.  Incidentally, using a Private Browsing mode is also sufficient to prevent people from seeing your history.

Your browser (ie. Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc.) only attempts to remove what it has saved on your computer, but it does remove information stored by other software while you are browsing. For example, in addition to clearing your browser history you should also consider:-

• It is easy for Spyware, malware, keylogger, etc. software to install itself on your computer without you being aware it is there.  This software can record your browsing. For example, keylogger software records every key that you type.
• Your browser does not control information your internet service provider (ISP) saves about you on their servers.
• Any plugins or add-ons that may have been installed in your browser (sometimes without your knowledge) will still record information about your browsing history.
• Your history, such as google searches, may still be recorded. For example, if you are logged into Google, You Tube or Facebook then deleting your browser history will not remove your online search history.
• Deleting or clearing your browser history does not delete the contents of your Downloads folder.
• Any plugins or add-ons software installed in your browser (sometimes without your knowledge) may have recorded information.
• If you are using Internet Explorer then your browsing history is still stored in a multitude of ‘index.dat’ files scattered across your computer. To make things worse, these are not deleted when you clear your browser history.  Find out how to clear the index.dat files in Internet Explorer.

This list is some examples of why clearing or deleting your browser history is not enough. It is, however, possible there are further issues not highlighted here. Although the nature of the internet makes it hard for the ‘average’ user to keep track of (or remove) what has been recorded, this is possible using specialist software.