Why should you clear your computer and browsing history? Well, computer safety is a very good reason, wouldn’t you say? The thing about Internet browsers is that the software used in most browsers can usually keep a record of all web pages that you visit. Our old friend Devon Fraser, of the online newsletter fame, says with a straight face that cleaning your browsing history is essential if you don’t want your wife to know that you’ve been viewing porn.

This is a family site, so we’ll abandon that line of argument and go on to higher issues. The heart of the matter is that most browsing software seeks to speed up your web browsing. Therefore, these browsers download web pages and store them on your computer’s hard drive - in a ‘cache’. For those of you who haven’t noticed, there’s a Temporary Internet Files folder in your PC that is a warehouse for all the items you saw (or heard) on the Internet, including web pages and cookies.

A cookie, incidentally, is a “message given to a Web browser by a Web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server”, says the Webopedia Computer Dictionary. If you cut out the tech jargon, a cookie basically identifies users who have visited a particular page and enables the page to load more quickly in case of a repeated visit.

So a cookie speeds up your browsing, but it is also a record of your Internet activity, and there may be several reasons why you don’t want people to know what you’ve been doing on the Net. Dominic Hutchins, a domestic abuse counselor in Philadelphia, says he advises most of his clients to clear their computers and browsing history because of fears that their abuser may track their Internet browsing patterns.

Even if you have no such pressing reason, we would advise you to clear your computer and browsing history because it enables your PC to run faster. However, even if you clear your Temporary Internet Files folder, there will still be other areas that you need to clear. “It is necessary to clear all search history from the search engines that you may have used,” says Devon. “Most search engines have a built-in Clear Search or similar option.”

As for clearing cookies, Temporary Internet Files and browser history, different browsers will have different options. We list the most common ones:

INTERNET EXPLORER 5.0 OR 6.0 FOR WINDOWS
-    Click the Tools menu on your browser
-    Select Internet Options
-    In the General tab, and under the Temporary Internet Files section, click Delete Temporary Internet Files
-    Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog
-    Exit Tools menu and restart your computer

NETSCAPE 4.0 AND ABOVE FOR WINDOWS, MAC AND LINUX
-    Click the Edit menu on your browser
-    Select Preferences
-    Click on the + sign next to Advanced
-    Select Cache
-    Click Clear Memory Cache
-    Click Clear Disk Cache
-    Click OK

INTERNET EXPLORER 4.5 AND 5 FOR MAC OS 8 & 9 AND MAC OS X
-    Click the Edit menu on your browser. For Mac OS X, this becomes Explorer menu
-    Select Preferences
-    Choose Advanced from the Web Browser heading on the left side
-    In the Cache section, click on Empty Now
-    Click OK

AOL 5.0 FOR WINDOWS
-    Click MY AOL, and select Preferences on the AOL menu bar
-    Click the WWW button
-    Click the General Tab
-    Click Delete Files
-    Click OK

AOL 6.0 - 8.0 FOR WINDOWS
-    Click Settings, and select Preferences on the AOL menu bar
-    Click Internet Properties (WWW)
-    Click Delete Files
-    Click OK

AOL FOR MAC
-    Click Members
-    Click Preferences
-    Select Web
-    Click Empty Cache

MOZILLA AND NETSCAPE FOR MAC AND LINUX
-    From the Menu, select Edit and choose Preferences. OS X users need to select Mozilla and then Preferences
-    In the window that opens, you will see a list of triangles and topics
-    Click the triangle next to Advanced and select Cache
-    Click the Clear Disk Cache and Clear Memory Cache buttons
-    Click OK

MOZILLA FIREFOX
-    From the Menu, select Tools and choose Options
-    Click Privacy
-    Click Clear next to Cookies
-    Click Clear next to Cache

To clear your computer’s browsing history, follow these steps:

WINDOWS 95 AND ABOVE
-    Click the tab marked History in the toolbar of Internet Explorer
-    Your web pages history will appear on the left
-    Under the Today section, highlight the names of pages you wish to remove from the history and hit the delete key on           your keyboard on each page name
-    To clear the entire history, follow steps 1 and 2 and then click on the button that says Clear History, and then     press           Yes

MOZILLA FIREFOX
-    From the Menu select Tools
-    Click Options
-    Click Privacy
-    Click Clear History. You also have the option of clearing cookies and Temporary Files here