How to delete your Internet and Document History

Whether you are working at a job where security is a strong issue, or writing
a book about unsavory characters, at some point, just about everyone wants to
insure that their computers are not revealing their privacy. Just because we
are not doing anything worth hiding, doesn't mean that we've also given up the
right to our personal space.

Computers hold on to a great deal of information which most users don't give
a second thought; until they run across the horde one day and realize that every
program and every web site viewed can be tracked.

This is remarkably annoying during the Christmas season, when your girlfriend
knows how to go through temporary folders to discover what you have been shopping
for.

Temporary Folders



A while ago, I talked about a utility program called Empty
Temporary Folders, which is a great program once you have found all of the
temporary and cache type folders. It can also clear away many of the cookie
and page history files as well. It doesn't get them all, which for some reason,
nothing seems to. We can still get everything by going through a few steps ourselves.

"Empty Temporary Folders"
is still a good program however. Many software programs use their own cache
folders for their temporary files. Some of those programs you can tell to use
a particular folder instead of the default. If there is that option available,
I suggest you take it, for several reasons. The first of which is that the less
cache folders you have, the easier it is to keep an eye on the disk space the
cache files are using.

In that tutorial above you'll see the list of temporary folders I have setup
for my system to delete and clear.

After we run that program we are still going to want to clear the Recent Program
list.

Then we are going to run Disk Cleanup from our System Utils folder off the Start->Programs
Menu. We are doing this to get at the System Restore Point files, as well as
cleaning up anything that our other efforts to this point didn't get. This is
a good time to go through your Installed Programs area and see if some of those
games and other software items can go as well. If you don't know what something
is, it is probably better just to leave it until you find out.

Browser History

We cleared out the history file for Firefox already in the instructions above.
Unfortunately, IE isn't so kind to us. IE keeps your history listings inside
the Registry file, so just deleting them isn't really an option.

What we can do is this:

1. From the IE Tools menu select Internet Options.

2. Select the General tab.

3. Click Clear History.

4. Click Yes to confirm.

5. Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box. Your past is erased.

You can also directly edit the registry to clear the IE history. This approach
lets you selectively clear URLs from the IE History folder.

1. Start regedit.exe.

2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs.

3. Delete the URL entries you want to remove--except the (Default) value; it
should remain in the list.

4. Close regedit.

You can use the Empty Temp
Folders program to clear your history, cookies, and URL's.

I would suggest using the Empty Temp Folders program, since you are there already.
Just choose the Cookies, History, URLs tab and click on the clear buttons. The
program does allow you to save certain files if you really want to (for example
login cookies from Google or some other trusted service).

While I am giving you the Registry instructions, I do not recommend that you
use them. They are nice to know, and you can check that area to see if anything
is "holding out" but really most of the time, it is best not to edit
the registry directly.

In Firefox, it would also be wise to run through the Privacy tab area and use
the Clear buttons on anything you just want to be sure of:

Temporary Folders Assigned to Secure Directories

Many programs allow you to set the directory that will be used for History
and Temporary files. For example, in Firefox we can set the Cache folder location
like this:

Specify where to store the cache

To specify in which folder the cache is stored, add the following code to
your user.js file:

// Path to Cache folder:

user_pref("browser.cache.disk.parent_directory","C :\\Path To
Cache");

Remember to use two backslashes for the path separators if you're using Windows,
e.g. C:\\Path\\Path To Cache instead of C:\Path\Path To Cache.

In fact we can move everything in our Profile area to a specified folder, as
These Instructions describe. http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

If you are very concerned with security and keeping your usage history from
getting into curious hands, then one answer is to assign all of your history
and temporary file locations to secured directories.

One solution for this plan is to use TrueCrypt,
a very sophisticated encryption tool for Windows XP, which allows you to create
directories that are encrypted, and become usable on login after a pass phrase
is given to open them up. This is actually a perfect use for a tool like
TrueCrypt.

A pass phrase by the way is exactly that, a phrase, not a word. This allows
for even safer encryption levels and much harder to guess, yet easier to remember
keys. I always use a phrase like "And here's Johnny", or "A do
run run run a do run run". If you can guess that while I'm typing it, then
you probably deserve to see my Internet cookies and temporary files.

Since TrueCrypt is a seriously high
level encryption program, it may seem like over kill to use it on history files,
but it is also very easy to setup and maintain, so you get the best of both
worlds.