Deleting Browser History for Dummies

data recovery - recover deleted files

If we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times: you can't trust the bull some random person threw at the internet just to earn a few bucks. Oh, sure, some freelancers are selective and only write about topics "in their wheelhouse," so to speak. The problem is that too many others, especially those at content farms, have merely googled a question and reworded the first half-coherent search result. A lot of them seem to have or be working on "communications" and journalism degrees, which they seem to believe makes them capable of writing about anything. They're not: witness Melissa King attempting to explain "How to Permanently Delete the Internet Browsing History on a PC" for ItStillWorks.com.

King explained why you might want to do this:

"When you browse the Internet, you leave behind traces of your activity, including the websites you've visited. The Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome browsers offer a way to delete your browsing history to prevent others from seeing it. You can also further protect your privacy by erasing saved passwords, deleting cookies and removing your download history."

All of that's true, so Melissa diligently offered up step-by-step instructions for those three browsers (never mind that there are more browsers than just those three). And, as far as we can tell, the instructions are correct for whatever versions of the browsers were current when she wrote her post. That's not our point, however: after all that's done, King warned her readers that

"You cannot retrieve your history once you delete it."

Bzzzzzzzt! Wrong answer, Melissa! The question included the word "permanently," which you ignored. Anyone whose computer literacy exceeds "turn it on + surf the web + upload a video with an app" already knows that there are ways to recover files that have simply been deleted. The reason is that deleting a file in Windows doesn't destroy it, deleting a file simply flags it as deleted: all of the information is still sitting out there on your hard drive. Anyone can get an app that will recover this data – including your sweetie or the fuzz.
That's not to mention that at least some of the deleted history is still saved in the most recent disk recovery file, and perhaps the backup files as well. If you want to actually delete the files, you need to run a second step that overwrites the space where the files were stored , such as a "shred" or "erase" tool. There's no trash truck coming around to take those old files to the data landfill; the space is 100% recycling.

Apparently, King didn't know this – and that's why she wasted the time of anyone smart enough to find the "delete browsing history" option in their internet browsers by just dumping out tired old rehashes of instructions. She ignored the most important word in the question, and that ignorance is precisely why she's out Dumbass of the Day for the fourth time; her second time for flubbing a "permanent deletion" question.

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