Christopher Webb, Used to work at a computer repair shop amongst other places

Answered November 2, 2016

My parents are going to view my computer's entire history. What should

I do?

OK let’s look at what you’ve told us:

1. You’ve only had the laptop for a month

2. Your Dad is strict
3. Some things in your history are embarrassing
Based on this I’m guessing you’ve used your new laptop supplied by your parent(s) for the
purposes of doing your schoolwork to look at certain 18+ sites and/or sites that your father
would not approve of. I’m also going to assume it’s a Windows device, although most of these
steps will work regardless of the OS you’re using.

Firstly, I’d consider the fact that your parents have decided to employ the services of a
computer repair shop to look through your browsing history a breach of privacy. If they
think you’ve been doing something on there that they disagree with I would have said it
was far better for them to explain their position to you, including their fears of what you
might find and be exposed to. In my experience the best parents are the ones who talk to
their children rather than using draconian measures to control them.

But let’s look at your situation now.

Firefox browsing history

You only have a month’s worth of browsing history. If you delete it, they’ll know you’re
hiding something. If you wipe the computer, they’ll know you’re hiding something. If you
‘lose’ the computer, they’ll know you’re hiding something. Do you see a pattern here?

With this in mind, and knowing you only have a month’s browsing to cover, why not just go
through the history and delete the entries that you don’t want them to see? If the computer
guy fires up your history and only sees legitimate stuff then that might be enough to keep
them happy. It would look far less incriminating than an empty browser history. You can do
this by opening your Firefox history by clicking on History->Show all history or using the
shortcut Ctrl-Shift-H. Right-click on each entry you wish to remove and click on “Delete this
page”

Firefox browser cache

Now let’s say the computer guy decides to dig deeper and look at the cache. That might
catch you out, but it’s easily resolved:

You can either:

1. enter about:preferences in your browser bar or

2. Click on menu (that’s the button at the far right with the three horizontal lines),
then preferences
Once there:

1. Click on the Advanced panel

2. Click on the Network tab
3. In the Cached Web Content section, click Clear Now.
Saved passwords

Firefox allows you to save passwords, and also expose them. If you don’t want those
passwords exposed do the following:

1. Go to the preferences section as above

2. In about:preferences, click on Security
3. Click on the “Saved Logins…” button
4. Click on each saved login entry and click on “Remove”. If you don’t want any of
them, click on “Remove All”.
NOTICE THAT THERE IS A BUTTON CALLED “Show Passwords” - IT DOES EXACTLY
THAT. If you can’t remember the password for a site, click on that button to see them all.
Write it down or memorise it, then delete it.

Don’t forget to look in the recycle bin

Remember to look through anything you’ve saved that you don’t want your parents to see
and delete it. Once you’ve done that, REMEMBER TO EMPTY YOUR RECYCLE BIN.

Taking it a step further

That will stop the average computer repair guy since many have only a basic understanding.
But let’s say our computer repair guy actually knows their stuff and has data recovery
software. In that case you’ll need a program to wipe the unused portions of the drive. You
could download one from the Internet like SDelete, but why complicate matters?

Windows 7, 8 and10 have a program called Cipher that will wipe the free space for you. So
here’s what you do:

1. Run the Windows Command prompt as an elevated program:

 In Windows 7 that means clicking on Start -> Accessories, then Right-Click on
“Command Prompt” and click on “Run as Administrator”. Alternatively you could
type cmd into the search, Right-Click on the Command Prompt in the search
results and click on “Run as Administrator”

In Windows 8 or 10 Right-Click on the Start button on the Desktop and click on

“Command Prompt (Admin)”
2. In the Command Prompt window type in the following command:

cipher /w:C

Don’t forget to press [Enter]. It won’t do anything until you do that.

This is assuming your user data is stored on the C drive (almost certainly, it’s rare
to have a Windows computer where the user data is stored on a different drive to
the Operating System. This will only wipe the free space; your programs and
data will be left untouched.
Cipher will now overwrite all the free space 3 times: Firstly with 0x00, then with 0xFF and
finally with random numbers. There will be no way for anyone to recover deleted data from
that drive now, even if it was sent off to a professional data recovery centre.

Future-proofing your private activities

You could use Firefox’s Private Browsing feature to hide your activities but it’s not foolproof
and you could definitely still get caught out by a competent person. Others have suggested
creating a Linux a virtual machine using Oracle’s free VirtualBox.

I’ll suggest a better idea: A bootable USB thumb drive.

They’re easy to make. Just buy a USB drive that’s at least 16GB in size, download a Linux Live
CD from one of the many Linux distributions (I use Linux Mint) and follow the instructions
for creating a bootable USB drive from the distribution’s site. You can either create a fully
functioning OS that you can update and save data to, or you can copy the Live CD image
directly onto the drive and have a system that leaves no trace. The choice is yours.

Here’s an example of how to create a bootable non-persistent Linux Mint USB drive:

Once you have this you can plug the drive into your computer, turn it on and boot from the
USB drive instead. It might do this automatically, or you might need to find the boot device
options menu and select it from there. Once you’re finished, shut down the computer and
remove the USB drive. Keep it on your person or hidden in a place that no one else can get
to and your privacy will be maintained.
Good luck.