How to Check Your Internet History

Keep your child safe while surfing the Internet.

You can check the websites your child has been visiting online using features already available on your Internet browser without the need to pay for pricey monitoring software. Checking your Internet history is simple, free and only take a few minutes to do. It can give you a detailed idea of what your child is up to whenever they surf the Internet.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. Launch Internet Explorer.

2. Press the "Ctrl" and "H" keys simultaneously. Select the "History" tab. From the drop-down menu, select how you want to view the Internet History. You can choose to view by date, site, most visited, order visited today or search history.

3. If you want to search the history by day, select how long ago you want to view the history. For example, if you want to view websites visited today, select "Today." A list of websites that your child visited will appear. You can review the name of each website in the list. To investigate a questionable website further, click the name of the website and you will be redirected to it. Then, you can review the website's content to see if it is appropriate for your child to be viewing.

4. If you want to search for a specific website in the history, select the "History" tab and select "Search History" from the drop-down selection. In the "Search for" field, type in the name of the website that you are looking for and click "Search Now." If the website appears in the history, it will appear in the search and you can confirm that your child viewed that website. If the search doesn't return results then it's possible that your child didn't visit the website.

Tips & Warnings

• Your Internet history isn't necessarily the most reliable way to check where your child has been visiting online. It's very simply to delete a website from the history list. If your child knows how to delete items from their history, this will effectively prevent it from being displayed when you subsequently check your child's Internet activity.

References

• Internet Safety - Internet Family Fun: Checking Up On Your Child's Internet Activity