The Importance of Clearing Your Internet Cache and History

The other night I was at a computer job. The computer was infested with spyware and viruses. I went through the machine and cleaned it all up. Then the big question, “How can we keep my son from getting on porn sites.” I know everyone has done that one search that leads to a porn site but really kids at the age of 6 aren’t out looking for porn are they? My first order of business was finding out how the kid actually found the porn site his mom caught him on. It was pretty simple, clicking the down arrow in Internet Explorer yielded a wealth of porn sites. The kid really had quite a few to choose from. That’s when the husband and wife admitted to actually browsing porn.(Big Shock)

I find this is the case in at least 35% of the homes I travel too. People surf the porn sites on the same computer their kids do there homework or play games on. How can this be avoided? Pretty simple if you ask me, there is at least 1 full proof method. Don’t surf on that machine, but they’re others too. You can enable content filtering with a password, which again is pretty easy to do. Then if you want to surf to those sites all you have to do is disable content filtering. Another way would be to have supervised internet time with the kid. That’s a big shocker, spending time showing your kids, the internet is a wealth of information, can be very rewarding. I know, I know, some kids aren’t keen on you watching over there shoulder while they IM their friends and browse MySpace. This calls for another method.

There are numerous content filters or internet filters on the market, but your biggest defense is keeping your machine clear of tempting links. Back to that computer job, the husband and wife had no clue it was that simple for their son to find the sites they were visiting. A simple cleanup would have spared them the embarrassment. You really want to see some embarrassed people. A 28 year old tech finds the couples secret in less than 20 minutes. Update I also added Opera and Safari

Okay so how do we clean our history and temporary internet files?

1. In internet explorer go to the tools menu and click internet options
2. On the General Tab look for the Browsing history Section
3. Click Delete
4. Click Delete files on the next screen.
5. Click Delete History from the next screen.

For Mozilla Firefox

1. Goto the tools menu and click options
2. Click the privacy tab
3. Click clear now
4. Make sure Browsing history and cache is checked
5. Click Clear Private Data Now

(Side note – you can have mozilla auto clear this every time you exit firefox.)

1. On the privacy tab check: Always clear my private data when I close firefox.(That way when you exit quickly it all goes away .

For Opera

1. Form the File menu select preferences.
2. From Preferences click history and cache.
3. To clear typed in addresses and history click clear.
4. To clear Disk Cache click Empty now.

For Safari

1. From the Safari menu, click Empty Cache.
2. When asked are you sure click Empty.

That could save you a lot of embarrassment when your kids find what porn site you’re visiting. Can you really scold your kids for being their. Probably not because you left the door cracked and all they did was walk in. So next time your surfing the porn sites remember to cover your tracks or your kid could follow them to where you don’t want them to be.