If you are anything like me, you really like your privacy. I don’t like it when people can see my personal information or can follow up and see what I have been doing. Some people are doing things on their computers that they really don’t want people to know about. Whether you are visiting adult sites or sites that can be embarrassing (especially at work!) you’ll want to know how to cover your tracks. But covering your tracks goes beyond your internet usage. Open up Word or Excel on your computer. Go ahead—I’ll wait. Take a look at the menu and see if you can open a recently used file. If you are at all worried about security or sensitive data why allow someone to see what file you were just working on? In fact if you don’t use Word or Excel (or any other program for that matter) you will see files that you may have opened a week or two ago sitting there in your history. This especially important if you are using a shared computer—you work in a shared office environment or you and your spouse or significant other also use the same computer. Let’s walk through a few steps that you can do to erase your tracks and then I’ll show you a few programs that do a more thorough job.
The first and most important thing you can do is erase your history and temporary files in your internet browser. This varies slightly depending on which browser you are using so for this article I am only going to discuss the two most popular ones—Internet Explorer and Firefox. (Every other browser works basically the same!).
Internet Explorer
A. Bring up Internet Options from the Tools menu, then select “Delete all…”. Alternatively delete individual items, using the History Pane accessible from the toolbar button.
B. Delete cookies - In the same IE Internet Options window, select Delete Cookies. Alternatively delete individual items, accessible using the View Files button.
C. Delete temp files - In the same IE Internet Options window, select Delete Files.
D. Delete saved form and password data by clicking on AutoComplete on the Content tab in Internet Options. Cover your tracks by clicking on the Clear Forms and Clear Passwords buttons.
Firefox
- Use the ctrl-shift-delete key combination and check the list for what you want to delete (cookies, passwords, form, password data, temp files). Alternatively delete individual items, go to the Tools menu and click Options > Privacy > Cookies > View Cookies to choose which ones to keep and delete.
For the rest of your tracks you can do it yourself using various tools but it is far simpler to use an all in one tool like Anti Tracks.
Anti Tracks is the complete solution which will protecting your online privacy and enhancing the performance of you PC. Internet tracks, computer activities and programs history information are stored in hidden files on your computer. With a simple click Anti Tracks will securely erase these unnecessary and unsecured hidden files. Supporting Internet Explorer, FireFox, Netscape, Opera and AOL give you peace of mind that whichever browser you will use your tracks are always “securely” erased!
Whatever your choice is, make sure to always cover your tracks and never leave yourself exposed!
