[This piece was on the BT website in Dec. 2014; the piece also includes screenshots. I've copied just the text here in case the BT item gets removed at some point in the future.]
The Christmas school holidays mean children might be spending more
time online than usual over the next couple of weeks and having some idea about
what they’re doing is essential for safe internet use.
All web browsers maintain a list of recently visited web sites,
known as the ‘browser history’, and this is easily viewed for some peace of
mind.You can also look at the temporary files all web browsers save
automatically during web browsing, as well as the Windows ‘DNS cache’ (a list
of sites visited very recently), but this information can be harder to
interpret.
Don’t, however, automatically assume that a suspicious web site or
file means your child has strayed where they shouldn’t. Web sites can be opened
accidentally and all kinds of files can be downloaded inadvertently.
We’ve used Internet Explorer here, but all web browsers maintain a
browser history and save temporary files.
Step 1. Find Favourites. To view the browser history in Internet
Explorer 10 or 11, click the star-shaped Favourites button at the top-right of
its window. In Internet Explorer 8 and 9, the button is at the top-left of the
window and has a star labelled Favorites.
Step 2. Locating Browsing History. A dialog box opens with three tabs
— Favourites, Feeds and History. Click the History tab and you’ll see a
list of days for the past week, followed by previous weeks. Click an entry in
the list to reveal the web sites visited during that day or week, then click a
site to the pages that were visited. Clicking a page opens it in the browser.
Step 3. Viewing History. The list is set to ‘View By Date’ by
default. You can see which web sites have been visited the most by selecting
the View By Most Visited
option from the drop-down list at the top of the dialog box. You can also get a clearer overview of visited sites by selecting
the View By Site option.
This groups together all visits to a particular site and you can see the date
of each visit by hovering the mouse pointer over an entry.
Step 4. Check temporary files. To view any temporary files that the web
browser has downloaded automatically, click the gear-shaped Tools button at the top-right
of the window in Internet Explorer 10 and 11, or open the Tools menu in Internet Explorer
8 and 9. In both cases, then select Internet Options
from the menu.
Step 5. View temporary files. Look for the Browsing history section on
the dialog box that opens and click the Settings
button. When the second dialog box opens, click the View files button on the
‘Temporary Internet Files’ tab.
Step 6. Looking at your files. A Windows Explorer window will
open, showing anything from just a few to several thousand files. Many will
have meaningless names, but look through the list and you’ll also see image
files with names that do give some clue about their content. You can open these
image files, too.
The window will also contain text files with names that start with
‘cookie’. These are the cookies that most web sites store on visitors’
computers and the web site name is usually shown as part of the filename.
Step. 7. The DNS cache. Both the browser history and temporary
files are easy to delete, but the Windows DNS cache needs a little more know
how to clear, so it’s also worth examining occasionally – especially if your
child knows how to delete their browsing history.
Click the Start
menu on the Desktop and type cmd
into the Search box. Press the Enter
key and a window will open with a black background, white text and a flashing
cursor. Type ‘ipconfig
/displaydns’ (again, without the quotes) and press Enter.
Step 8. Viewing the DNS. A list of DNS entries will appear.
Maximise the window to make it easier to scroll through the list and you’ll see
the addresses of recently visited web sites, along with a few bits of other
information you can safely ignore. Just close the window when you’ve finished
looking.
The DNS cache is cleared regularly and automatically by Windows,
so don’t be surprised if there aren’t many — or any — entries in this
list.
