How to Delete History from Computer
Level of difficulty: Easy
Erasing history on a computer can free up hard-drive space your computer has allocated to save items you have viewed. It will also prevent someone from gaining access to private data that may cause harm to you, your family, or friends. Your computer tracks and saves many of the activities you perform on it. There are two ways to delete traces of your computer habits. The first involves manual searching and deleting of history and the second involves using specialized software.
Materials Needed:- A desktop or laptop computer
- specialized privacy protection software (optional)
Step 1
If you are using Internet Explorer 5 and above, open Internet Explorer then click on 'Tools'. A pop-up menu will appear. Click on 'Internet Options'. Click on the 'general' tab. Go to 'Browser History' and you will find the 'delete' button. Click on that to delete. You may opt to also 'delete all offline content'. Click 'OK'. When the hourglass icon has disappeared, you can also start deleting 'cookies' the same way you deleted offline content.
Step 2
Open Firefox if you are using Mozilla. Then, click on the 'Tools' menu. A menu will appear where you can click on 'Clear Private Data'. A pop-up menu will appear and give you the options to clear the specific data you want to erase. These may include toolbars and extensions. Click on 'Clear Private Data Now' when you have chosen what to delete. Firefox users can take a shortcut and press and hold CRTL+SHIFT+DELETE to open a window to delete Internet browsing history. This will automatically open the 'Clear Data' window.
Step 3
Netscape users can remove Internet history by clicking on 'Edit' and then selecting 'Preferences'. Select 'History' and then choose and click on the button labeled 'Clear History'.
Step 4
Clicking on the 'File' menu, then 'Preference', then 'History' can delete history if you are using the Opera browser. Click on the button labeled 'Empty now'. Consider choosing the 'Empty on exit' option if you want to erase browsing history every time you exit your browser.
Step 5
You may want to consider downloading specialized privacy protection software and installing it in your computer if the given steps prove too tedious to be done regularly. Some of these programs do not only erase Internet history but applications history as well. This means that the software will also delete the record of files and programs you have opened or saved recently in your computer. This kind of software is useful if you want to ensure maximum privacy in your system.