How to clear your browser history in Internet Explorer

Removing cookies, bookmarks, passwords and log-in details from Internet Explorer can seem complex, but it’s not. Here’s a quick guide on how to clean up your browser.

Sometimes you’re working away from home, on a public system or on another person’s computer and you don’t want to take the chance of someone snooping around your online documents, log-ins or shopping details.

While Internet Explorer does offer an InPrivate Browsing mode, the alternative is to wipe all traces of your internet history, which includes eliminating cookies. While it can be just a helpful thing to know, here are the main steps to wiping each area.

Deleting Internet Explorer Cookies

  1. First close Internet Explorer.
  2. Click Start > type Internet Options and press Return.
  3. Go to General and under Browsing History select Delete.
  4. Select all the tick boxes to delete Cookies, Form Data, History, Temporary Internet Files, Passwords and InPrivate Data.

 

Remove past sites

  1. It’s possible to remove your current browsing history while in Internet Explorer by selecting Settings > Safety > Delete Browsing History.
  2. In Internet Explorer 8 just select Safety in the toolbar and once complete, a dialogue box will open up.
  3. As in the previous step you can do this at any point during your browsing.

 

Removing rogue sites

Often you find that websites can still be displayed in the address bar. This can be fixed by resetting the Internet Explorer settings.

Select Start > Control Panel > Internet Options > Advanced and select Reset.

Just be warned you will lose any settings.

 

Turn off AutoComplete

You may want to stop Internet Explorer remembering website form details in the first place.

  1. To do this in Internet Explorer select Tools > Internet Options > Content > AutoComplete settings and uncheck the Address bar, Forms, User names and Passwords on forms.
  2. Then click Delete AutoComplete history.

 

Delete on exit

It’s possible to get Internet Explorer to wipe your browser history on exit, which can be handy in case you forget to do it on a public system.

  1. To do this in Internet Explorer select Tools > Internet Options and under Browsing history tick Delete browsing history on exit.
  2. Also go into Settings, and under Temporary Internet Files click Never. This will prevent Internet Explorer from storing cached pages.

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