When you search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or specific sites like Facebook or Twitter, the browser caches that search history onto the local computer in temporary files. If you don’t manually delete the search history, someone can easily come along and view all of your previous searches.
In order to see the most recently visited sites in IE and Chrome, you can open up the History sidebar or tab. However, it would be a tedious process to open each browser individually to see the search history. Additionally, you still would not be able to see the searches performed on social sites.
If you want to quickly view all of the most recent searches performed on a computer, regardless of which search engine or which browser has been used, check out a cool program called MyLastSearch. ..
MyLastSearch is a tiny program that doesn’t even require you to install it in order to use. It’s simply an .EXE file that can be run from a portable USB drive if you like! That means you can take it around and quickly connect it up to any computer and see the recent searches performed! This is a bad program if it gets into the wrong hands!
I ran the program on my computer and got a bunch of search results back! It breaks it down into a table with Search Text, Search Engine, Search Type, and Search Time.
According to many people, using this tool will help you find the information you are looking for on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and Alexa. However, I was not able to see the search results for searches I performed on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. This could be because I was not logged into either service or because the tool is not compatible with those sites. ..
If you want to be safe and not have your search history readable by MyLastSearch, you can delete the cache and history files from your browser. Basically, you can clear the local browsing history and you’ll be fine. In Firefox, you need to go to Tools (three horizontal bars), then Options, then click on Privacy and finally click on the clear your recent history link.
You can choose to never remember your history by clicking on the Firefox dropdown next to “Never remember history” and choosing “Never remember history.” In IE, click on the Settings gear icon and choose Internet Options. On the General tab, click the Delete button under Browsing history. You can also check the Delete browsing history on exit so that browsing history is never stored in IE.
Chrome’s settings icon (three bars again) and History are two different things. The first is a control panel where you can manage your browsing history, and the second is a setting where you can clear it. Chrome doesn’t have an option to not record history or to clear your browsing history on exit. Instead, you have to rely on third-party extensions.
MyLastSearch is a quick and easy way to see search history on a Windows computer. It does a good job overall, and is worth noting that before you run the program, you should log off the computer and log back in, if possible. Some browsers do not write all data to the local cache until several minutes after being closed or until the user logs out of Windows, so you may not see all searches unless you first log off. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy! ..
