Checking Your Computer’s History
The
history provides a list of the websites that have been viewed
from your computer. For safety reasons, parents please review
your computer’s history to stay informed of the places your
children visit online. (If the history is consistently empty,
it is possible that either your child is deliberately erasing
the history to keep you from finding out where they go online,
or perhaps your computer is set up to automatically delete the
history each time you exit out of the Internet. You might want
to disable the auto-delete feature).
To
check your computer’s history, follow these steps:
-
Find the
long narrow box (called a Navigation Bar) at the top of the
screen where web addresses can be entered.
-
To
the right of this box, is a little drop down menu with an
arrow. By clicking on the arrow, you can see a list of the
different websites that have been viewed from your computer.
-
AOL
automatically saves the last 300 places visited.
-
Internet
Explorer can be customized to report a list of the places
visited in the last 999 days.
-
After
you view all the entries in your computer’s history, you can
clear it.
*There
ARE other ways to stay informed regarding your child’s activity
online!*
Beyond
checking your computer’s history, you can also search your
computer for any pictures that have been downloaded from emails
or the Internet.
To
look for downloaded photos or images, follow these steps:
-
Click on
your computers Start menu (look for the word “start” at
the bottom left of the screen).
-
Click on
Programs or All Programs.
-
Click on
Accessories.
-
Now
click on System Tools and finally click on Disk Clean Up.
-
When you
click on Disk Clean Up, a window will pop up to tell you
whether there are any items stored in the category of
Temporary Internet Files. If you click on Temporary Internet
Files, and then select View Files lower down in the box, you
will see a row of documents or folders. By clicking on these,
you can quickly find out if any photos or images have been
downloaded to your computer.
-
To erase
the contents of Temporary Internet Files, just go back to the
Disk Clean Up window and click OK.
-
It is
also a good idea to check the Recycle Bin on your computer to
see if your offspring have discarded anything that you need to
know about.
