any hackers in the village?

[BetterLateThanNever]

Sort of a strange question but I was wondering if anyone in the village knows how to trace a computer users activity on the internet once they delete the browser history? I have very good reason to believe that a family member is up to know good and I want to know how bad the problem and deciding how to confront them.

[Pianolady]

You could use computer monitoring software. There's a myriad of them at majorgeeks.com in the covert ops category.

[IntlMom]

I had to go through this several months ago. Try this:
check through the temporary internet files
also, if they use google, you can actually see searches that they;ve done

there a few others around here that may be able to help you too

[cissylu]

I`m sorry I don`t know. wish I could help. good luck.

[mombottoo]

Can you limit this persons ability to make changes...take away administrator privileges? If not you can try restoring your computer to an earlier time that might refresh the history files.

[BetterLateThanNever]

Can you limit this persons ability to make changes...take away administrator privileges? If not you can try restoring your computer to an earlier time that might refresh the history files.

Do you mean turn back the clock on the computer to see earlier browser files?

[DeadPenguin]

I am not sure that going back to Windows "Restore Point" will bring back the browser info.
I am not sure the age of the target so I am not sure what we are looking to prevent or catch them doing.
If the person you are watching is a child you can lock down access to a lot of things on the PC. You do this by making them a "limited user". Make sure you have Admin rights to do this. To set access rights go to Start->Control Panel->User Accounts-Change an account->"pick which account by clicking on it."->Change account type -> change from Administrator to Limited.
This will prevent this person from installing new programs, deleting certain system files, and changing computer configurations.

I am pretty sure the person will still be able to delete their browsing history.
Majorgeeks is a great website. I would look at Download.com its a little more graphically friendly. Plus download.com has user reviews for the software.

If I suspected my wife or children of anything I would install a key logger on their account to log their keystrokes for each session. If this did not yield the results I was looking for I would look into a monitoring/surveillance application.
*if you use a keylogger make sure it is discreet and runs in the background so the target does not see it. Probably good to do a test run on that persons account to make sure your keylogger is "invisible".

If it is a child and you are worried about adult content there are content filters you can use to limit this exposure. I don't know of any good windows ones. I am sure someone here could recommend.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Blair

[JustMegan79]

If it is a child your worried about, netnanny software or something similar will help.

To Check history after "history" has been deleted:

go to the task bar at the top of your screen. Click Tools. It will be a drop down menu.

Choose "INternet Options"

Next to "Browsing History" Click Settings

Change Days to keep in history to a higher number, and also make sure "disk space to use is somewhere above 100.

Then Click "View Files"

This will bring up a string of URL's. To the right of them you can see the Last Accessed Time and Date. (changinig disk space used in the previous step will allow in the future this URL list to be more detailed)

These are not clickable URL"s, but you can read them or copy/paste them to your address bar to see what site it was if you dont recognize it.

This is sort of a backdoor method, as most people who erase history do not dump internet temporary files or cookies/cache.

good luck and if this is too confusing, pm me and I will try to step by step it more.

Megan

[BetterLateThanNever]

Thanks for the help everyone.


I did check out the internet temp file. I'm going to wait for some alone time to be able to check out what being viewed on the net.

If anyone else has any suggestions. I'd be happy to see them.