How do I delete my online history?

As shown by the recent Windows advert of a man, upon his girlfriend's return home,he hurriedly escaped from the engagement rings page he was looking at, and erased his online tracks. Secrecy over one’s Internet usage can be very important. In this article, we will explore the ways through which one can particularly delete one’s browsing history.

On Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers

Procedure for Google Chrome
Firstly, click on the spanner setting icon just to the user’s right of the toolbar and, from the drop-down menu of this, click on the option to ‘History’ which can also be accessed by clicking ‘Control + H’. This opens up one’s browsing history for the day in a new internet tab. From here, one can individually delete sites, either by visualising sites visited today on the screen or by searching them in the search bar at the top of the page. Option
There is also an option to clear all browsing history which, if clicked, takes you to another tab with the option of setting what it is to be deleted (download history, cookies, visited pages etc.) and over what time period. Procedure for Mozilla Firefox
There is a simple option of clicking on ‘Tools’ and ‘Clear Recent History’, which again, gives one the option of deleting selected types of browsing history from periods of an hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, today or everything.
Other ways of deleting online tracks
For a more sophisticated way to clear tracks of Internet use, one can click instead on ‘History’ of the top-left toolbar and then ‘Show All History’. From here, one can search individual site visits or activity over a certain day/period and delete this accordingly. Another nifty trick available on Firefox and Google Chrome is the ability to quickly clear an unwanted address bar suggestion by pressing ‘Shift + Delete’ when it is highlighted.

On Internet Explorer and alternatives

How to delete history in Internet Explorer 9
One must navigate to the ‘safety’ menu in the top right, then click ‘delete browsing history’ (‘Ctrl+Shift+Del’). The options for this do allow one to preserve a favourite website by date. However, they do not allow one to select individual sites, files etc., only whole groups such as ‘cookies’, ‘history’ etc. Default settings
Alternatively, to avoid the problem at the beginning itself, one can use the default Internet settings of the three main browsers (which remembers computer use).These can be applied on sites where one doesn't mind others seeing their activities and also on ‘private browsing’ mode (which does not remember data) for embarrassing sites which revealing of surprise gifts etc. All three browsers have such modes and Google Chrome’s is called ‘Incognito mode’.