Accessing browser history

Your browser history is a veritable map of where you go on the internet and for what purpose. And it’s not only possible to tell where you’ve been, but when you’ve been there, establishing your behavioral patterns.

Knowing you access certain sites can lead to phishing attacks against you to obtain your credentials for those sites (assuming you haven’t stored this information in the browser), establishing your purchasing habits (for instance if you are a football fan and visit NFL sites, your credit card company isn’t likely to raise an eyebrow if a slew of charges for football merchandise start showing up on your compromised credit card) or even blackmail if the site(s) in question prove illegal or unethical, or allegations thereof can be made.

Recommendations:

Clearing the browser cache is a good way to flush potentially damaging information, especially after engaging in confidential activities such as conducting online banking. This can be performed manually or set to do so automatically such as when closing the browser (Google the details for your browser version and operating system to carry out this and the other recommendations as the steps involved may be subject to change).

Use incognito mode (private browsing) since no harvestable data is stored (if you must use a public system, always make sure to do so with incognito mode).