Online Privacy and clearing your web browser history and cache - NSPCC

14 December 2006

The amount of privacy that you have online can be a controversial topic. It varies from those that believe that personal freedom should be a given right, to those that believe that you don't need privacy unless you have got something to hide. Well here is an example where privacy can be important.

You may not know it but whenever you visit a web site the computer keeps all kind of information that can be used to show others the sites you have visited. This includes information in the browsers history, and downloaded files in the cache as well as cookies that are left by the site.

As a quite test you can view your browsers history by press CTRL-h if using Firefox, or CTRL-SHIFT-H if using Internet Explorer. It may come as a shock to see that the sites you have visited are now listed!

The NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) has a page on their web site telling you how to clear you browsing history from your local computer. For a child that is suffering abuse there are obvious reasons why they don't want the abuser to know they may have visited the NSPCC web site.

The NSPCC - Hide Your Visit page gives details of how to clear the information in Internet Explorer 6.

Fortunately for both Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 it is much easier to clear the browsing history.

The Firefox browser acknowledged the need earlier and pioneered the easy techniques to protect privacy. To clear the browsing history in Firefox use the Tools Pull down menu and click on Clear Private Data. You can then click on the information you want to clear and press Clear Private Data Now.

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) has now added a similar feature in response to the other browsers. To access this click on the Tools menu button and then Delete Browsing History. With Internet Explorer you then need to click each of the options in turn that you want to delete, or click delete all.