ParetoLogic Privacy Controls > Tutorials > Cleaning Address Bar History in Internet Explorer
Cleaning The Address Bar History In
Internet Explorer
- Maintaining your personal security on the Internet is important. Spyware, viruses, and hackers can gain access to the information on your computer. Anybody with direct access to your system can also gain this same personal information. Personal information that is likely to be stored on your system includes password and username data for regularly used websites as well as the URLs of websites you have recently visited. Pages are also stored in the Internet cache folder to speed up the loading of that page when you next access it.
Download Privacy Controls for Free!
Internet History Folders
Internet Explorer and other browsers all store this information for later use. Should a third party or malicious script gain access to your system they will be able to harvest your personal information. In the case of spyware scripts this will inevitably mean the serving of advertisements that are similar in topic to the websites you visit. The consequences of a hacker gaining access to this information is potentially much more damaging.
Erase Internet History Using ParetoLogic Privacy Controls
ParetoLogic Privacy Controls is a PC scanner and a secure file shredder. The powerful scanning engine can be used to scan your entire system including Internet Explorer 7. It can search for the list of URLs you have visited and can securely delete this history ensuring you retain your personal privacy whenever you are online. There are several levels of deletion available ensuring that you can quickly delete information to free up hard drive space or completely shred personal data to prevent it from being used by third parties.
1 – Opening ParetoLogic Privacy Controls
To erase Internet history open ParetoLogic Privacy Controls and click on the Options link in the top left of the main screen. This will take you to the main scanning options tab from where you can dictate the areas of your system that you wish to scan and set the deletion level as required.
2 – Selecting The Internet Browser Options
On the options screen scroll down and ensure that the Internet browsers check box is ticked before clicking the arrow next to it. This will bring up a list of the browsers that ParetoLogic Privacy Controls supports.
3 – Selecting Internet Explorer
Ensure that Internet Explorer is ticked and, again, click the arrow next to the check box to bring up the options relating to Explorer. As well as clearing the address bar history you may wish to clear the following related items on your system.
Temp Internet Files Folder
– This folder is also referred to as your Internet cache. Pages
and web page elements are stored in the cache whenever you open them,
in order that they can be opened quickly and easily in the future.
Your cache can be used to ascertain the web pages you have visited.
History – This is a history of the sites you have visited and
can be viewed in the Explorer bar of your browser. Anyone with access
to your system can view this information unless you clear it out
regularly.
Address Bar History – Whenever you enter a website or a web
page a record of the URL you enter is stored within the address bar.
When you next begin to enter the URL Internet Explorer will prefill
with this selection. Anyone with access to your Internet Explorer can
quickly and easily view the pages you have recently visited by using
this information.
4 – Selecting Deletion Options
Once you have filled all the relevant check boxes with ticks you should also decide on the level of deletion that you require. ParetoLogic Privacy Controls offers 4 different styles of deletion.
The most basic deletion is the
same as deleting a file through Explorer and is not a secure method of
deletion. This method is advised if you are simply trying to clean out
your system and improve the performance of Internet Explorer and your
system. These deleted files are often recoverable especially using
specialist data recovery software so should not be used if you are
attempting to protect your personal data.
A single shred can help to prevent access to deleted files.
Some specialist software can still access parts of the files that you
have deleted but it will be more difficult and less likely than using
a standard deletion process.
Three overwrite passes prevent the majority of data from being
recovered. Specialist software will be required and files may still be
unrecoverable after deletion.
Seven overwrite passes provides the most secure method of
deletion. Data recovery specialists and data recovery software will
not be able to recover any meaningful data once your files have been
deleted using this method. This is the most secure deletion option and
is strongly recommended for the removal of personal data.
5 – Starting The ParetoLogic Privacy Controls Scan
Once you have selected the style of deletion required you should click on the Scan & Erase link in the top left of the screen. This will take you to the scanning page. Click Start to begin scanning your computer according to the options you have selected.
6 – Selecting The Files To Delete
Once the scan is completed the scan progress screen will be replaced by a scan results screen. This screen lists every file that ParetoLogic Privacy Controls has been found and gives you the opportunity to deselect any of the files to prevent them from being deleted.
7 – Erasing The Files
Once you have removed any files from the deletion list click on the Erase button and confirm your choice in the resulting confirmation window.
8 – Completed
Once the deletion has completed press the Finish button to complete the process and return to the main ParetoLogic Privacy Controls window.