Okay so the last post dealt with clearing your interent history, if you havent read it go there now. So now you know where to clear your browsers history and temp files. But what about when you went to google and searched for something that you dont want seen. Like searching for a loved ones birthday ideas or that suprise vacation you want to take your family on. If you dont clear your auto complete form data someone can see what you searched for.

Here’s the kicker with autocomplete, if you enter your credit card into a computer with auto complete turned on you can actually pull it up again without needing your credit card. That may be a big shock but try it, go to a site you have ordered something from and see if you start typing your credit card number if the rest shows up. Did I get your attention now, this is why you need to clean up after yourself.

Now lets just say you were at an interent cafe, or a library with computers and internet access. You just ordered something from the web. If autocomplete was turned on guess what, your credit card could be used again. I actually ran into this a couple of months ago. I was browsing the web at my parents house when waiting for a spyware scan to complete. I found a really great book online and went to order it. My parents bank at the same credit union as we do so when it came to entering my credit card number i was shocked that as i typed the first 8 numbers where the same. I finished my purchase and asked my mom to see her debit card for her account. The first 8 numbers where the same. I called my uncle and asked him, he banks at the same location, guess what his were the same too. Now if you live in a small town like ours it would be pretty easy at the library to get multiple credit card numbers.

With that hackers or others can actually steal a part of your identitiy to use your credit card or debit card at will.

So how do we clean this up:

Internet Explorer

1. Go to the tools menu and select options
2. Click the content tab
3. Click AutoComplete
Click Clear Forms

If you decide that you no longer wish for Internet Explorer to use its autocomplete functionality you can stop this by unticking any of the checkboxes in this window. Should you change your mind you can turn this functionality back on by simply reticking the checkbox(es).

For Firefox Users

1. In firefox go to tools and select options
2. Click Privacy tab
3. under private data click settings
4. Make sure Saved form and search history is checked
5. Then hit clear now(If you dont see this refer to this post)

For Safari Users

1. Go to the “Safari” menu and select “Preferences.”
2. From the menus that pop up, select “Autofill.”
3. Go to “Other forms” line and select the “Edit” button.
4. From the list of sites for which AutoFill is currently being applied, select what concerns you
5. Click Remove

If any one has the opera How-to please let me know and I will post it here.