Is it possible to recover deleted internet history?

M

Mr Happy

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 19, 2013
Messages
113
Hello all

I have a windows 8.1 pc.

A family member uses my PC regularly but AWAYS deletes their internet history from the browser after using it.

is their any way I can recover this deleted internet history/view it to see what they have been doing online?

thanks
 
Mr Happy said:
is their any way I can recover this deleted internet history/view it to see what they have been doing online?
Click to expand...

No, you can't. Next time make sure they use a separate account so they don't delete your internet history. You can lock down Internet Explorer so they can't delete their history - make sure you only set this for their account, not the general one - but that won't stop someone savvy from installing another browser or deleting the files directly from their Windows profile.

If this is a child, I suggest you move the computer into a room where an adult can supervise.

The techie way would be to set up a proxy server and set that to record everything. Lock down IE and Windows so they can't change the proxy server settings.
 
Quartz-1 said:
No, you can't. Next time make sure they use a separate account so they don't delete your internet history. You can lock down Internet Explorer so they can't delete their history - make sure you only set this for their account, not the general one - but that won't stop someone savvy from installing another browser or deleting the files directly from their Windows profile.

If this is a child, I suggest you move the computer into a room where an adult can supervise.

The techie way would be to set up a proxy server and set that to record everything. Lock down IE and Windows so they can't change the proxy server settings.
Click to expand...

I dont know how to do the stuf mentioned in the last sentence.

Its not a child; its an adult family member.
 
If it was written to disk and not subsequently overwritten, then it may be possible. You would need a disk forensic software.
 
You can try using system restore to recover it . Using system restore select the date you’d like to restore your computer to and sit back and wait until it does its thing. When finished the computer will reboot and when you check your browser the internet history should be in there.
 
Just keep in mind it may be illegal to do this, even on your computer... That being said, SpectorSoft makes the software you need, but it isn't cheap. Our company uses it and is perfect at what it does.
 
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Install something like freefilesync, setup the real-time sync tool to copy the contents of the internet history to another location on an update basis. Anything new/changed automatically goes into the copy location and even if they ditch their history, you can just pull up the copy location and review it.

Alternatively, just use group policy editor to disable internet history removal.

Alternatively to the alternative, lock the PC's accounts down so they can't use it at all. Problem solved.
 
I'm surprised no one has asked, what do you suspect that family member is doing ?

*Grabs popcorn*
 
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