Your Private Data
When it comes to surfing the Web, privacy is usually at the forefront of most of our minds. Whether we are conducting a financial transaction, catching up with an old friend, or just checking out highlights from last night's game, our browser leaves small traces on our hard drive telling exactly where we were and what we did while we were there. These small traces are broken out into several different components. This article describes these components and tells you how to delete history. It is imperative that you know what each component is if you choose to clear history in your browser.
Browsing History
The first is browsing history, which is a record of Web pages that you have visited in the past. Each entry usually contains a page's title as well as its corresponding address, or URL. Browsing history can prove to be very useful, especially when you want to find a page that you had visited earlier in the week, month, or even year and cannot remember how to get there. However, you may not want others using the same computer to know what sites you have been to. All browsers give you the ability to browse, organize, or delete these records permanently.
Cache
Cache is temporary storage on your hard disk where recently viewed Web pages are held. It allows you to quickly load a previously visited page without having to reload the page and its images from the Web server on subsequent visits. Reasons for clearing your browser's cache may go beyond simple privacy matters. For example, if your browser renders a cached Web page you cannot be absolutely certain that you are viewing the latest version of said page upon your next visit. Another reason involves performance. When the cache becomes full, you may notice your browser beginning to function slower. In addition to giving you the ability to clear the cache, many browsers let you specify the location on your hard disk where cache is stored, the amount of space allocated to it, as well as the frequency in which pages are saved.
Cookies
Cookies are messages passed from a Web server to a browser which are stored on your hard drive in the form of a small text file. They can have many uses, the main one allowing a server to identify a user and present customized pages and/or login information to the user's browser when they revisit a Web page. These files can contain information that you may not want to leave behind.
Other Private Information
Some browsers store other private information such as a record of the files you have downloaded, a history of your search terms, passwords that you have entered into Web forms, and much more. Each of these items, depending on the user, may be treated as sensitive data. In these cases it is important that your browser supply a method in which to manage this information.
