Look, we get it. It was late at night and you had a couple of beers—it
was just you and your computer. Everyone allows their id to run wild and
explore the virtual world on occasion. But now there's a digital record of all those things you looked up online and
it's all available to anyone with access to your device.
First, let's be clear about the situation: unless you tell it to do
otherwise, your trusty browser will keep a very detailed list of all your
Internetting—including all those weird, crazy, unspoken things that you would
never discuss with your co-workers or loved ones.
It's probably a good idea to clear the record of these potentially
embarrassing explorations before you find that they've been inadvertently shared with the world. And we're not just talking about all
those p0rnog searches—you probably don't want people knowing that you were looking up
information about medical concerns, emotional problems, or controversial
political opinions.
One way to proactively avoid any issues is by setting your browser to not record your surfing behavior (try
conducting these searches in a non-record-keeping "private window" in
Firefox and Safari, AKA an "incognito window" as it's known in Chrome, or in an "InPrivate" window in Internet Explorer). But if
you neglected to proactively take yourself off the record (say in the
aforementioned "couple of beers" scenario), here's how you can clean
up your digital history.
Note, the websites you visit may keep a record of your visit; the list
below will only clean up the record on your local system. Click here to see which browser got
the title for PCMag's favorite.
Also Read: Removing Junk Files in Windows 7
Click the three lines in the top-right corner and select
"History" from the pull-down menu (or conversely, just click Ctrl-H
on a PC). This will prompt a new tab where you'll find a long list of your
recent Web visits. You can remove individual visits by checking the box next to
each entry and then clicking "Remove selected items."
If you want to clean a wider swathe of your history (for example a
whole day's worth of browsing), click the "Clear browsing data…"
button at the top of the History screen to prompt a pop-up window. Make sure
the box next to "Browsing history" is clicked, in addition to any
other type of information you'd like to delete (e.g. cookies, cached images,
downloads). The pull-down menu at the top will give you the option to delete
the materials for a certain period (e.g. past hour, past day, past week, or
since the beginning of time). Then just click "Clear browsing data"
at the bottom and your history will be expunged.
In the Chrome mobile app, tap the three dots (or sometimes three lines)
in the top-right corner and click the "CLEAR BROWSING DATA" button at
the bottom of the screen.
Click the three lines in the top-right corner and choose History >
Clear Recent History (or on a PC, just click Ctrl-Shift-De). This will prompt the
"Recent History Box" to pop up. Here, you'll find a pull-down menu
with time range options to clear that spans from "Last Hour" to
"Everything." If you click the details button you will see the
various types of data you can try to delete (browsing history, cache, etc.).
Choose the ones you would like to obliterate and then click "Clear
Now."
Click the little gear in the corner and select Safety > Delete
browsing history (or alternatively, click Ctrl-Shift-Del). The prompted pop-up screen only gives you the
option to delete your browsing history en
masse—i.e. there's no way to just delete smaller spans of time such as the
past hour or past day. Click the boxes next to the types of information you
would like to delete, and then click the "Delete" button at the
bottom.
For Mac users only. Click on the Safari menu and choose "Clear
History and Website Data" to prompt a pop-up. Here, you will only have the
ability to delete all your information in one fell swoop (you can't, for
example, parse out just downloads or cache). There is, however, a pull-down the menu which will allow you to delete your information over different ranges of
time.
On iOS, click the bookmarks icon to the left of the navigation bar,
select History, and then Clear at the bottom of the screen. This will give you
the option to clear your history over a certain amount of time.
If you really want to clean
up your virtual trail, you will need to sweep up more than just your local
browser. Just because your search history is of your system, it's still up
there in the cloud. For example, whether you know it or not, Google keeps a
very detailed online diary of everything you do while logged into its Web
services (even if you're just logged into your Gmail account). Just go to google.com/history to check it out. If you see anything you'd
like to delete, click the box next to any offending queries and then click the
"Remove items" button at the top. (*Poof*) If you happen to be one of
those weirdos who "Bings it," you can find your history over at bing.com/profile/history.
Have a look at it: How to Delete Temporary File?
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