Cover your tracks online

The safest option
 

If you are concerned that someone is monitoring your internet usage, your safest option is to access the internet from another place, such as a friend's house, your place of work, an internet cafe or local library.
 

Other options

Below are some steps you can also take to cover your tracks and increase your safety online.

Clear your internet history
Every time you use the internet, your internet browser automatically saves pieces of information as 'cookies' in its history or cache, such as the search words you type into search engines, website pages you visit, or passwords and login names you use.

Depending on the browser and the version of the browser you use, you can either preset your own privacy settings, or you can manually clear your history and/or empty your cache files after each use.

Listed below are manual procedures for some of the most popular internet browsers. It's important to note that doing this may also raise suspicion, although these procedures are commonly used to improve computer performance.

When making any changes to your browser settings, be sure to close and restart your browser to ensure the changes take affect.

Do you know what browser you are using?
If you know what browser you are using, you can skip to the relevant instructions below.

To find out what browser you are using, select 'Help' from the browser toolbar. A drop-down menu will appear and at the bottom will read, 'About Internet Explorer' or 'About Mozilla Firefox', etc,. If you then select this, a new window will appear with details of the browser version.
 

• Internet Explorer version 7
  
  From the Internet Explorer toolbar, select Tools > Delete Browsing History. A new window will open.
  
  Select either 'Delete All', or the type of history you want to delete individually, then 'Yes' when prompted.
  
  Select 'Close' to exit the window.
   

• Internet Explorer version 6
  
  From the Internet Explorer toolbar, select Tools > Internet Options. A new window will open.
  
  Select the 'General' tab and in the 'History' section select 'Clear History' then 'Yes' when prompted.
  
  From the 'Temporary Internet Files' section select 'Delete Files' and 'Yes' when prompted.
  
  From the 'Temporary Internet Files' section select 'Delete Cookies' and 'Yes' when prompted.
  
  Select the 'Content' tab, then 'Autocomplete' from the 'Personal Information' section.
  
  Select 'Clear Forms' and 'Yes' when prompted.
  
  Select 'Clear Passwords' and 'Yes' when prompted.
  
  Select 'OK' to exit the window.
  
   
• Mozilla Firefox version 2 and Netscape Navigator version 9
  
  From the browser toolbar, select Tools > Clear Private Data. A new window will open.
  
  Select the type of data you wish to clear by ticking the boxes. Then select 'Clear Private Data Now'.
  
  The window will automatically close.
  
   
• Safari version 3 (for Mac and PC)
  
  From the Safari toolbar, select Safari > Reset Safari (Mac users), or select Edit > Reset Safari (PC users).
  
  This clears the history, empties the cache, clears the Downloads window, and removes all cookies, including any saved passwords and usernames.
   
• Opera version 9
  
  From the Opera toolbar, select Tools > Delete Private Data.
  A warning message will appear in a new window. Select 'Details'.
  
  Select the type of data you wish to delete by ticking the boxes, and then select Delete'.
  
  The window will automatically close.