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Cover Your Web Tracks

Google Chrome

Clear your entire browsing history

  1. Click the Chrome menu Chrome menu on the browser toolbar.
  2. Select Tools.
  3. Select Clear browsing data.
  4. In the dialog that appears, select the “Clear browsing history” checkbox.
  5. Use the menu at the top to select the amount of data you want to delete. Select beginning of time to clear your entire browsing history.
  6. Click Clear browsing data.

The following information is removed when you clear your browsing history:

Web addresses you’ve visited, listed on the History page
Cached text of pages you’ve visited
Snapshots of your most frequently visited pages on the New Tab page
Any IP addresses pre-fetched from pages you’ve visited

Google

Remove all Google Web History

Here is how to remove all Google Web History. While signed in to your Google Account:

  1. Visit your Web History page at https://www.google.com/history, or click the gear icon on the upper right corner of a search results page, and then go to Search history.
  2. Click the gear icon again on the upper corner of the Web History page, and go to Settings.
  3. Click the delete all link.
  4. Then click the Delete all button to confirm.

Tip: To prevent your future web activity from being stored, you can turn off your Google Web History.

Internet Explorer

To remove the cached Internet address entries, clear the History folder. To do so, use the appropriate method:

Internet Explorer 4.0, 4.01, 5, 5.5, 6.0

  1. Close all running instances of Internet Explorer and all browser windows.
  2. In Control Panel, click Internet Options.
  3. Click the General tab, and then click Clear History.
  4. Click Yes, and then click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

NOTE: Values in this registry key are listed as Url1, Url2, Url3, and so on. If you delete only some values and the remaining values are not in consecutive numerical order, only some of the remaining entries are listed in the Address box. To prevent this behavior from occurring, rename the remaining values so that they are in consecutive numerical order.

Internet Explorer 3.0

In Internet Explorer:

  1. Click Options on the View menu.
  2. Click the Navigation tab.
  3. Click Clear History, and then click OK.

NOTE: Values in this registry key are listed as Url1, Url2, Url3, and so on. If you delete only some values and the remaining values are not in consecutive numerical order, only some of the remaining entries are listed in the Address box. To prevent this behavior from occurring, rename the remaining values so that they are in consecutive numerical order.

Netscape

Deleting Web History in Netscape 4

In order to delete your browser history, cache and cookies, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Preferences… from the Edit menu.
  2. In the Preferences window, click on the word Navigator, then click on the Clear History button and the Clear Location Bar button.
  3. Click on the box next to the word Advanced. This should display several more choices. Then, click on the word Cache and click on the Clear Memory Cache button and the Clear Disk Cache button.
  4. Next, click on the word Advanced. You should then see a section labeled Cookies on the right side of the Preferences window. If it is set to Accept All Cookies or Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server, change the setting to Disable Cookies.

Remember what the original setting was, because you will need to change it back to that setting in the next step.
Once you have set it to Disable Cookies, click the OK button to close the Preferences window.

  1. Next re-open the Preferences window (by choosing Preferences… form the Edit menu, as in step 1 above), click on the word Advanced again, and set the Cookies preference to what it was before.

If it was set to Disable Cookies in the first place, you can ignore this step.
Then click the OK button to close the Preferences window.

  1. Go to back to the Protect Yourself page to delete other files which may be created by your browser.

Deleting Web History in Netscape 6

Clearing All Privacy Items

In order to delete your browser history, cache, cookies, web form data and download history, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Preferences… from the Edit menu.
  2. In the Preferences window, click the arrow next to the word Navigator and click on the word History. Then click on the Clear History button and the Clear Location Bar button.
  3. Click the arrow next to the word Advanced and click on the word Cache. Then click on the Clear Memory Cache and Clear Disk Cache buttons.
  4. Click the arrow next to the words Privacy & Security and click on the word Cookies. Then click on the View Stored Cookies button.
  5. In the Cookie Manager window, click on the Remove All Cookies button. Then click the Close button.
  6. In the Preferences window, click on the word Forms (under Privacy & Security). Then click on the View Stored Form Data button.
  7. In the Form Manager window, click on the arrow next to Other Saved Information. Then click the word URL-Specific.

Next, you must manually delete all values which are attached to any sensitive sites. So, if you see a listing which has “www.amazon.com” in the URL field, you may not need to delete that. But, if the listing contains “www.safehorizon.org” in the URL field, you probably want to delete that line.

In order to delete the line, just click in the Value field and delete all the text there. (In the example on the right, you would delete the word “Female”)

  1. The field may contain more information. Click the arrow on the far right side of the field. If other lines of information is displayed, select each line and delete the text for that line.

Once you have deleted all values for that field, when you click on the arrow on the right side of the field, you should see only a check mark in the pop-up menu.

  1. You may need to delete other information in the Form Manager. You should look through all the categories listed in the box on the left side of the window (Primary Contact, Shipping, Billing and Other Saved Information) and look for anything which might seem suspicious. Then, delete those items by selecting the text in the field on the right and deleting that text.

These fields may also have more information. Remember to click on the arrow on the right side of the field and delete all suspicious information.
When you are done, click OK in the Form Manager window.

  1. In the Preferences window, click on the View Sites button.
  2. In the Form Manager window, click on the Forms Never Saved tab and then click on the Remove All button.

You may also need to click on the Forms Never Previewed tab and click on the Remove All button again.

  1. In the Preferences window, click the OK button to close the window.
  2. Go to back to the Protect Yourself page to delete other files which may be created by your browser.

Deleting Web History in Netscape 7

Clearing All Privacy Items
In order to delete your browser history, cache, cookies, web form data and download history, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Preferences… from the Edit menu.
  2. In the Preferences window, click the arrow next to the word Navigator and click on the word History. Then click on the Clear History button and the Clear Location Bar button.
  3. Click the arrow next to the word Advanced and click on the word Cache. Then click on the Clear Cache button.
  4. Click the arrow next to the words Privacy & Security and click on the word Cookies. Then click on the Manage Stored Cookies button.
  5. In the Cookie Manager window, click on the Remove All Cookies button. Then click the Close button.
  6. In the Preferences window, click on the word Forms (under Privacy & Security). Then click on the Manage Stored Form Data button.
  7. In the Form Manager window, click on the Remove All Saved Data button. Then click the OK button.
  8. In the Preferences window, click on the Manage Sites button.
  9. In the Form Manager window, click on the Forms Never Saved tab and then click on the Remove All button.

You may also need to click on the Forms Never Previewed tab and click on the Remove All button again.

  1. In the Preferences window, click the OK button to close the window.
  2. Next, choose Download Manager from the Tools menu.
  3. In the Download Manager window, click on one item and then hit control-A on your keyboard (hit both the control key and the A key at the same time; on Macintosh, hit apple-A). This will select all the files in the list. Then click on the Remove From List button.
  4. Close the Download Manager window.
  5. Go to back to the Protect Yourself page to delete other files which may be created by your browser.