How do I delete Internet Explorer browsing history?

This is something all Internet Explorer users should know. If you’ve browsed indecent (euphemism for pornography) web sites on your home or (God forbid) your office computer, your footprints will be clearly visible to anyone who checks the machine.

This is how I was able to check on one of my former employees and had to finally give him the pink slip because he kept visiting porn web sites even after repeated warnings. Had he known how to delete the Internet Explorer browsing history, he would have never been caught.

On a similar note, it’s a good idea to erase the browsing history each time you finish your work on a public or shared computer such as a library or an internet center – yes, even if you didn’t watch porn.

How to manual delete the browsing history of Internet Explorer

The simplest way to delete Internet Explorer browsing history is through the browser itself.

Internet Explorer version 7

Go to the “Tools” menu and select “Internet Options” to bring up a pop-up window. In the “Browsing History” section of the “General” tab, click on the “Delete…” button. You can now either selectively delete the Temporary Internet Files stored in the cache directory, Cookies, History, Form data and Passwords or simply hit the “Delete all…” button at the bottom to erase all the content.

The “Delete all” button will sequentially erase everything including the Internet Explorer history and it will take a bit of time to do this job if there is lots of content – please be patient. The system shall inform you of the progress through different pop-up windows. Click on “OK” when done.

By the way, Internet Explorer will store the web browsing history of the past 20 days. You can change this default setting quickly – in fact you can make this value 0 which ideally means that the web browser will not store any history! The settings section can be opened by clicking on the “Settings” button in the “Browsing history” section of the “General tab – refer image below.

Internet Explorer versions 5.x and 6.x

In the older versions of this browser, open the “Tools” menu and select “Internet Options“. Click on “Clear history” in the “General” tab to delete the browsing history.

Delete Internet Explorer browsing history through programs

Manually erasing the Internet Explorer browsing history is the only option on shared and public computers or on machines where you do not have permissions to download and install additional programs. However, this procedure always leaves room for doubt. Many believe that this manual deletion of the browsing history is far from thorough. So what do you do? Thankfully there are third party programs developed by some very nice people that you can download and use for free. These programs not only delete the internet Explorer browsing history but also let you manage the cache directory (temporary Internet files), cookies, autoform completion data etc. Check out the programs to erase web browser history.

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