How to Monitor Internet History
There are many reasons you might want to monitor Internet history. Chances are, if you are checking the web browsing history on your computer, it's to keep track of what web sites your teenagers or employees are visiting. There are some tricks to checking the history---especially if the browser is not logging a running history of visited sites. But fear not. This article will help guide you through the process of checking the history in Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browsers on a PC computer, as well as how to change the settings in each browser if the history is not being logged. Here's how you do it.
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Instructions
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Checking the history in Firefox
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Open a Firefox web browser.
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Click the "History" menu from the top of the browser.
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Select the "Show All History" option from the drop-down menu. This will open a new window displaying browsing history.
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Browse through the history to view sites that have been visited. If the window is blank, skip ahead to section three to learn how to reconfigure your settings.
Checking the history in Internet Explorer
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Open an Internet Explorer (IE) web browser.
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Click "View" on the toolbar.
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Select "Explorer Bar>History" from the drop-down menu. This will open up a side window in the main browser displaying the history from all sites visited by the browser in a given time frame.
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Browse through the history to view sites that have been visited. If the history is blank, see section three to figure out how to reconfigure your settings.
Reconfigure your Internet options for Firefox on a PC
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Click "Tools" in the toolbar for Firefox.
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Select "Options" from the drop-down menu. This will open up a pop-up window that will allow you to change history settings.
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Click the "Privacy" tab to access history settings.
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Check the following boxes: "Keep my history for at least ______ days," "Remember what I enter in forms and the search bar," and "Remember what I've downloaded" to keep a running log of the browser's history.
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Select the number of days you want to keep a running history by typing the number in the first box or using the toggle buttons. You will now have a history log of every page visited in the browser's history for the given time frame.
Reconfigure your Internet options for IE on a PC
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Click "Tools" in the toolbar for IE.
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Select "Internet Options" from the drop-down menu. This will open up a pop-up window that will allow you to change history settings.
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Click the settings button under Browsing History found on the "General" tab. This opens a new window labeled "Temporary Internet Files and History settings."
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Use the toggle buttons or type a specific number in the "Days to keep pages in history:" under the History section of the window. This will create a running log for you to monitor in the browser's history for the time frame you set.
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Tips & Warnings
If the browser's history is blank, it means there is no history being recorded. Check your browser's settings to readjust them and start recording a history.
