How in the Tech

Preventing Browser History Deletion in Internet Explorer

By Adam Myers ⋅ May 15, 2009 ⋅

Most Internet users are aware that their web browsers are tracking and recording every visit to every website. It’s trivial to follow the browsing session breadcrumb of a user if you have access to their computer. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer will display the browsing history by using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+H inside the browser. Users that are aware of the recordings are generally also aware how to cover their tracks by flushing the history cache at the end of their web session. Personal privacy has become so publicized now that all modern browsers feature a privacy mode that records nothing about the browsing session. Either of these options are fantastic to use for hiding your tracks, that is if you remember to utilize either of them.

But what if you are attacking this situation from the other direction – you’d like to prevent a user from cleaning up their tracks. This might apply if you wish to monitor what your child, spouse, employee, etc are visiting.  This functionality is possible in Internet Explorer using Group Policy under Windows Vista.

Before we begin I wanted to lay out one caveat – if the computer user in question has an administrative level account on the computer it is possible for them to revert our changes. That being said, it is still somewhat a tech-head task that the majority would not be aware of.

1. In Vista, click the Start orb and type gpedit.msc in the Start Search box. Launch Group Policy Edititor from the search results.



2. On the left hand side you are present two parent level folders: Computer or User Configuration. If you want these changes applied to every user on the computer you want to complete step 3 using the Computer branch. To affect just the currently logged in user, select the User branch.
3. Traverse from the appropriate branch to Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Internet Explorer -> Delete Browsing History.



4. In the right hand panel you are presented with a number of options all relating to Internet Explorer’s browsing history.
5. You will want to Enable the following options: Disable “Configuring History”, Prevent Deleting Cookies/Favorites Site Data/Form Data/Passwords/Temporary Internet Files, Turn off “Delete Browsing History” functionality. These can be toggled by double clicking on each line and changing the state in the resulting dialog window.



6. Finally, reboot the computer to apply the Group Policy settings upon next login.