How often you should clear your browser history

“Protection of personal data”, a phrase we constantly see on TV, read in newspapers, hear on the radio and is mentioned in every other line in the newsfeed of social media.

However, we usually do nothing about it. A typical example is the following: The “browsing history” of the “browsers” we use contains all the “sites” we visited, all the destinations we searched for to go on vacation, when and where we wrote a comment about our group or the political party we support.

In fact, the “browsing history” does not stop there but goes even further: There are records about the life insurances we looked for, the treatments or medicines we or people very close to us used, finally there are even photos of our very personal moments. In short, it is a chronological directory that contains everything, all our information.

For this reason, our “browsing history”, like millions of other users, is a very interesting statistic. In “data” terms, it is essentially a valuable asset. Big companies offer us through them advertisements cut and sewn to our measurements, so that we cannot resist the temptation. Politicians running for a seat in parliament or even on the city council can learn which users are best and who not to reach out to; that is, who are more likely voters.

Under normal circumstances and based on the “GDPR” regulation that was passed across Europe about 18 months ago, this valuable data acquisition is only given to those we agree to give it to; like “Google Chrome” for example. That in turn has no right to grant it to third parties. Unfortunately, however, as the Facebook and “Cambridge Analytica” scandals have shown, we users can never be sure.

In fact, apart from the big companies, there are also hackers specialized in “internet scams” (e.n.: frauds) who monitor the “browsing history” of users. Somewhere here, then, the most important question arises: What can we do about it? The answer is not simple as being constantly in incognito mode in the “browser”, so that our movements are not recorded, is neither pleasant nor useful.

What constitutes a certain solution is to delete the “browsing history”. The process for whatever “browser” we use (“Chrome”, “Firefox”, “Opera”, “Explorer”) is relatively simple. Let’s take for example the most popular internet “browser”, “Chrome”: Open the “browser”, go to the top right of “Settings”, click on “History” and then select “Clear Browsing History”. At the end we can choose what we want and what we don’t want to delete.

Because, after all, a clean “history” makes us much less vulnerable to any malicious action. How often you need to turn it off depends on how secure you want to feel. It is good, however, to do it at least once a month, since this way the “browser” you use will also “run” faster.

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