Use this simple trick to prevent users from clearing out the Browsing History information in IE7.

If you are a parent of a teenager or a young child then you’d prefer to keep an eye on your kids’ Internet activity. One way of doing this is to watch when they browse but that’s not practically possible in many cases. The alternate is to spy on their Internet activity. One way of doing this is to not let your kids clear out their browsing history information from the browser so that you can review it to see what websites they have visited and what kind of files they have downloaded.

Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista has a nice feature with which you can prevent your kid from clearing out the browsing history information. Follow these simple steps to prevent users from deleting the browsing history information,

Step-1: Login as an Administrator

Login to your computer as an Administrator so that you can make this change.

Step-2: Launch Local Group Policy Editor

Click on the Start menu and type-in “gpedit.msc” (without the quotes) at the Search box and press the Enter key. Windows will launch “Local Group Policy Editor” dialog.

Step-3: Locate the Internet Explorer node

On the left pane, expand the nodes User Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Internet Explorer. When you click on the Internet Explorer node you should be able to see a whole bunch of settings that you can change for Internet Explorer.

Step-4: Locate the “Prevent the deletion of temporary Internet files and cookies” item

Locate the entry on the right pane “Prevent the deletion of temporary Internet files and cookies”. Double-click or right-click to bring up the Properties dialog.

Step-5: Enable the setting to prevent users from deleting the browsing history

Click on the “Enabled” option and click the “OK” button and dismiss all dialogs.

Step-5: Logout as Administrator

Logout as Administrator from the computer.

If you leave your computer to be logged-in as Administrator and let you kid browse the Internet using your computer or if you’ve given your kid his own computer but with Administrator privileges then this might not work. If your kid is tech-savvy enough they can easily revert this change. So, I would recommend that you let your kid use their computers with non-Administrative privileges. Create their own user accounts and make it not an Administrator.

You can also tweak the setting to hide “Delete Browsing History” menu option in Internet Explorer 7 but then your kid would already be aware of this and might act accordingly.

I hope this helps you keep an eye on your kids’ Internet activity. If you have any questions/comments regarding this please let us know in comments.