Question about computer history please?

[flyinghigh]

Can anyone tell me please if I delete e mails that have been sentto me then permantley delete them in my trash e mails can they be recovered?

Also if when sending and recieving a message say through friends reunited etc if they are deleated on the site can they be seen when checking on computers history?

I know you can check what sites people have been on but can does that also show any messages that were written whilst on that site?

Okay, you cannot permanently delete anything without special software. If you are up to something your words can be recovered. ISPs keep a copy of everything for the govt. Also they often keep a copy on an online server you can find (if you are on BT broadband this is the case).

If you are on friends reunited and you log out of the site the cookie is destroyed which stops people reloading that page from history.

No to your final question unless you leave the browser open so someone can press the back key.

As homicidalmatriach says it's hard to really delete anything, but I suppose most people just want to be proof against MIL borrowing the PC and seeing something by accident.

In practice unless you have an expert in the family then deleting them will do it. If you use Outlook Express I'd suggest also going on File Menu - Folders and doing 'compact all folders' as this will overwrite them too.

I don't know about other browsers, but in IE you can select history and view sites later even after the PC has been switched off.

So go to Control panel - Internet Options and on the 'general' tab. Click to 'delete files'. On the same tab you can 'delete history'

Also on Internet Options but on the 'Content' tab you will see an 'Autocomplete' button. Click on it and you will see the option to Delete Forms and Passwords.

If you delete passwords then make sure you know what they all are first.

Forms will be lots of drop down boxes that remember things you typed in like google search boxes etc.

As far as I know ISPs currently store the sender/recipient of emails and not the content and almost certainly not the kind you type in on a website anyway.

Btw if anyone needs more security then Eraser securely deletes files and also can be set to clean the whole drive. In that mode it leaves the actual files but cleans in between them so any previously deleted files can not be recovered.