Rid your browser of naughty stuff

Archived Articles, Internet How-Tos

Question: I went to a porno site. Hey, I’m only human! But now it shows up in my web browser and I want to get rid of it – other people use this computer. Help! –Anonymous

Answer: This reader’s request is a classic. I’ve seen this question asked dozens of different way. One user said he’d been to “interesting sites”. Another pled for help because his parents were away, but coming back soon.

Anyway, I’m here to help, not to judge, dear reader. On that note, here’s how to rid your web browser of any reference to the material you’ve viewed. Incidentally, this can be used to rid a web browser of evidence of any visited web site.

There are a couple of steps you need to take to clean house.

First, let’s dump the images and site addresses. Browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer save images from visited web sites on your hard drive whether you click on them or not so the next time you visit you won’t have to re-download the image. It speeds up your surfing.

But this means that many megabytes of images of all types get saved to your hard drive. Put it this way – if you saw the image on your screen, then it’s safe to assume it’s on your hard drive somewhere. In addition, the addresses of sites you’ve visited also go into the browser’s history log.

Getting Rid of Images and Addresses from Websites You’ve Visited

To get rid of both the images and the address, start by figuring out which browser you’re using. To do this, start your web browser, the same one you used to visited the site in question. Click the Help menu at the top of your screen and then, in the list that drops down, click on “About”. It may say “About Internet Explorer” or “About Netscape”. Choose that option and the web browser’s name and version will be displayed. Make a note of that information.


For Internet Explorer, version 4 through 5.5:

  1. Click on the Tools menu and then click on the Internet Options item. A dialog box will pop up.
  2. Click Delete Files to get rid of cached images. Usually, these are either .GIF or .JPG files (something like naughty.jpg or naughty.gif), but they could also be .PNG files as well, though these are relatively rare.
  3. To erase visited web addresses so that they don’t appear in the address pull-down menu at the top of the browser, or when the History button is clicked, click the Clear History button.

For Netscape Navigator, version 6:

  1. Click on the Edit menu and then click on Preferences. A dialog box will open.
  2. Click the arrow next to Navigator in the box on the left so that it lists subtopics.
  3. Click on the subtopic called History. Then on the right, click the Clear History button.
  4. Also click the Clear Location Bar button. This will get rid of all previously visited web addresses as well as those concealed in the location pull-down menu at the top of the browser window.
  5. To get rid of cached images, select Advanced, and then reveal the subtopics by clicking the arrow next to Advanced.
  6. Then click Cache. On the left, click both Clear Memory Cache to clear images from the current browser session, and Clear Disk Cache to remove images from the cache folder on the hard drive.

If you have an older browser, see this TechnologyTips article on how to Wipe adult content from your PC and get information on clearing the history on older browsers.

Turning Off AutoComplete

Browsers also store visited web site addresses in the pull-down address bar. If switched on, the AutoComplete function will type out previously visited sites if you type the first few letters of the address. It’s designed to save time, but if you have visited, let’s say, “www.yummysexpots.com” and someone uses the computer after you and wants to go to Yahoo and they type in “www.y” the browser will auto-suggest www.yummysexpots.com, which is probably not what you wanted to happen.

To turn AutoComplete off in Internet Explorer 5 and later versions:

  1. Go to the Tools menu and choose Internet Options.
  2. Then choose the Content tab from the dialog box that opens up.
  3. Click the AutoComplete button, uncheck the Web Addresses box, and click OK.

In Netscape 6:

  1. Click the Edit menu and then Preferences.
  2. Then select Navigator and click the arrow to the left until a list of sub-options appear.
  3. Click Smart Browsing and uncheck Enable Location Bar autocomplete. Then click OK.

This cannot be turned off in earlier versions of Netscape Navigator. Older versions of web browsers don’t have this feature built in.

Windows 95/98/ME/2000 users may also want to remove the reference to web sites in the Documents menu off the Start menu. To do this:

  1. Right-click on a blank part of the taskbar (the gray strip along the bottom of the screen), then click Properties in the small menu that will appear.
  2. Next, click either Advanced or the Start Menu Programs tab.
  3. Click the Clear button.

You should also Clear your Cookies.

More info is in our Cover Your Tracks FAQ.

If after reading all of this you want a simple, easy-to-use product that does most of what was you just read above, in one click, I recommend Evidence Sweeper.