Cover Your Tracks Online

How do I cover my tracks - Deleting my Internet History?

I don't want others to know I have visited this site.

Your safety is the most important thing. If you do not want anyone to know that you have visited Newham Asian Women's website please read the information below. It sets out the steps you can take to increase your safety when using the internet.

Please remember that if you are concerned that someone is monitoring your internet usage, your safest option would be to access the internet from another place such as a friend's house, your work, an internet café or local library.

Covering your tracks

Every time you use the internet your internet browser saves pieces of information such as images, search terms or words used in search engines and login names. This helps the pages you visit frequently load faster by loading the files from your hard disk drive instead of having to downloading the web page in full again. These are saved as 'cookies' and they can mark a trail or 'history' that reveals what you have been looking at online. Below are instructions on how to minimize the chances of someone finding out that you have visited this website's such as NAWP.

However - please note that there is a risk involved in removing data from your computer. Removing cookies may clear saved passwords for membership sites or online banking which may alert your partner to the fact that you have removed information. Also, your partner may notice if the address history on the PC has been cleared, and this may raise suspicion.

When you have finished viewing NAWP's site take these steps to keep others from knowing you have visited this site.

If you are unsure what browser you are using click on Help on the toolbar at the top of the browser screen. A drop down menu will appear, the last entry will say About Internet Explorer, About Mozilla Firefox, or something similar. The entry refers to which browser type you are using. You can then follow the relevant instructions below.

Remove NAWP's site from your computers history:

1. On your keyboard press Ctrl-H together.
2. The history of the websites that have been viewed will show in the browser window.
3. Locate NAWP's folder. Right click on the folder and choose delete.
4. Close the history window.

Remove NAWP's site from your computers cache:

1. Pull down the Tools menu in the browser window.
2. Select > Internet Options.
3. In the dialogue box click on the button "Delete files".
4. In the alert box select "OK".
5. Click "OK" again to close the window.

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Internet Explorer 7 users

Select Tools > Delete browsing history. Click Delete All.

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Microsoft Internet Explorer users

Viewing History

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.x users can view their history files by clicking the "Tools" menu, "Internet Options", clicking the "Settings" button under the Browsing history, and then clicking the "View Files" button.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x users can view their history files by clicking the "Tools" menu, "Internet Options", clicking the "Settings" button, and then clicking the "View Files" button.

Deleting History

Microsoft Windows users running Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x and 7.x can delete their history files by clicking the "Tools" menu, "Internet Options", and clicking the "Delete Files" or "Delete" button. Users also have the option of automatically deleting files each time the close the browser window by clicking the "Advanced" tab and checking "Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed" under the "Security" section.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x users on an Apple Macintosh can delete the history by clicking the "Hard Drive" icon, "System", Â "Preferences", "Explorer", and moving the history file into the trash.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02 and lower users can delete their history by clicking the "View" menu, "Options", open the tab "Advanced", click the "Settings" tab, and click the "Empty Folder" button.

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Mozilla Firefox users

Viewing History

Press Ctrl + H to open the left-side history bar
or Click History at the top of the window
or Users using earlier versions of Mozilla Firefox can also view their history by clicking "Go" and clicking "History".

Deleting History

Mozilla Firefox users can clear their history by clicking the "Tools" menu, "Options", clicking the "Piracy" button, and under "History" click the "Clear" or "Clear Now" button.

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Netscape users

Viewing History

Microsoft Windows users can view history by first opening Netscape and click the "Edit" menu, "Preferences", "History", and view the location where Netscape is storing your files. Next, open this folder within Explorer.

Deleting History

Netscape users can delete their history files by clicking the "Edit" menu, "Preferences", "History", and click the "Clear History" button.

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Opera users

Viewing History

Users can view their history files by opening the "cache" folder within their opera folder. Microsoft Windows users can often find this within "C:\Program files\Opera\".

Deleting History

Opera users can delete their history by clicking the "File" menu, "Preferences", "History", and click "Empty now" button. In addition, users can check "Empty on exit" if they wish for this task to occur each time they exit the browser.

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Safari (often used on Apple Macs)

Resetting Safari clears the history, empties the cache, clears the Downloads window, and removes all cookies. It also removes any saved user names and passwords or other AutoFill data and clears Google/Yahoo search entries. To do this go to the Safari menu at top left hand screen. Choose Reset Safari, and click Reset.

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Toolbars:

Toolbars such as Google, AOL and Yahoo also record the search words you have typed into the search box. To remove all the search words you have typed in; check the individual instructions for your toolbar. For example, for the Google toolbar all you need to do is click on the Google icon, and choose "Clear Search History".

Deleting your browsing history:

Internet browsers also keep a record of all the web pages you visit. This is known as a 'history'. To delete history for Internet Explorer and Netscape/Firefox hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, then press the H key (Crtl, Alt and H for Opera). Find any entries that say www.refuge.org.uk, right click and choose Delete. For Safari, select History at top of the screen and choose "Clear History".

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E-mail:

Reading your emails is also a way in which your partner can monitor what you are doing. So it's important to remember the following:

If you do not use a password to log on to your computer, someone else will be able to access your email and track your internet usage. The safest way to find information on the internet, would be at a local library, a friend's house, or at work.

Any email you have already sent will normally be saved in the folder marked sent Items. Go to sent items and delete emails you don't want a person to see.

Sometimes an unfinished email will be saved in the folder marked ‘drafts’. Go to the drafts folder to delete it.

If you reply to any email, the original message will probably be in the body of the message - delete the email if you don't want anyone to see your original message.

Remember to empty your Deleted Items folder as all of your deleted items are stored there until you empty the folder and remove them completely.

If you have a shared email account or our partner has access to your login or password details, you may wish to set up a new email account that you can keep private. Use a provider like Hotmail or Yahoo for an account you can access from anywhere, and use a name that is not recognisable as you.

Please note: If an abuser sends you threatening or harassing e-mail messages, they may be printed and saved as evidence of this abuse.

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For more information on how to delete history & cache from your PC visit Computerhope.com or MVPS.org

Windows records a number of user activities in log files. These logs, or histories, can be deleted by users concerned about privacy issues. While bought software can erase history logs, this how-to will equip you to do it yourself for free. Each site you visit downloads to your computer. The images and animations and other items become stored on your PC, for a while to make it faster in the future to go back to that site.

In order to fully delete all traces of a site you must not be viewing the site at the same time, so please make a note of the steps below then close this site and reopen your internet browser on another site.

There are 3 main items being saved by most sites these are as follows: -

History

This is a log of the URL of your last visited sites, this is usually for up to 2 weeks, so that in case you forget the URL you can view the site again by looking for it in your history. This log is created automatically by your browser and can not be prevented by any website, you however do have full access to it and can delete as you wish.
To Delete the whole history of sites visited in the last 2 weeks select Tools > Internet Options > Clear History.

To Delete an individual items, click the History button this will display your recent history. Right click on the Item you wish to Delete and select Delete.

Cookies

Cookies are used for a variety of reasons from counting visitors to a site to saving log in information. These are small files created by a site on your PC, our site does not store any cookies, however you can still clear your cookies by selecting the following Tools > Internet Options > Delete Cookies.

Images and Files

To make loading sites faster, once you visit a site, some of the images and files used on a site are saved in a temporary folder on your pc, to make it faster for the site to load next time you visit, files like background images, logos and flash animations and others are automatically stored by the web browser, in order to delete these select the following Tools > Internet Options > Delete Files.

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