Got something lurking in your Internet history you’re not especially proud of? There are ways to cover (some) of your tracks.

The Internet is a wide and wonderful place, full of all sorts of fascinating human endeavours. However, the gamut of human endeavours runs from the truly illuminating to the significantly… less savoury. Maybe you’ve been there, whether by design or by accident, or maybe you’ve been researching the perfect gift for your loved one, and you just don’t want them opening up a page that’ll give the game away before their birthday. Or maybe you’ve been browsing job boards at work and don’t want your boss to know about it. The reasons for clearing your Internet history can be wide and varied, and I’m certainly not going to specifically judge you. if you want to delete your browsing history it can be done easily on any browser.

So how do you go about making those sites you’ve visited vanish from your history? At a simple level, it depends on your choice of browser.

Google Chrome

In Google’s Chrome browser, click the Chrome Menu (the three “hamburger” lines) and choose “History”. That should bring up the recent browser history, along with an option to clear your browsing data. You can delete selected ranges of your browsing history, bearing in mind that if you’re signed into your Google account it’ll show browsing history across all of your devices.

Microsoft Edge/Internet Explorer

On Microsoft’s Edge browser — the newer browser that comes with Windows 10 — select Hub>History, and then choose “Clear All History”

If you’re still using Internet Explorer, it’s probably wise to shift browsers, but if you really must, and want to clear your browsing history, click the Tools button within IE, then select Safety, and choose “Delete Browsing History”

Mozilla Firefox

If you’re a Firefox user, hit the menu button (the “hamburger” three lines menu) then History, and then choose “Clear Recent History”

How do I connect my Smart TV to the Internet?

Apple Safari

For the Mac version of the browser, simply click on the Safari menu where it says “Safari” and choose “Clear History”. You can then choose how far back you want your historical wipe to go.

If you’re using Safari on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you’ll need to go into the Settings app (not Safari itself), tap Safari there and choose “Clear History” from there.

What about private mode?

Most browsers offer a private, non-tracked mode that doesn’t record the history of sites visited, so in one respect you’re less tracked that way if someone else uses the same computer and browser after you.

That having been said, there’s nothing implicit in the way that privacy modes work that makes you any more actually private in one significant aspect, because you’ve still got to request a given site or service via your private browser window, and that request itself can be stored and tracked, even if your local browser doesn’t store it itself.

Clearing your history won’t hide everything

Clearing your Internet history by deleting it will clear it from your immediate browser cache, but there’s a very big red flag to throw at this right away. Just because it’s gone from your computer doesn’t mean that there’s no record of it anywhere. Tracking algorithms designed to serve you contextually relevant ads take note of when you visit particular sites via tracking bugs and cookies. Some browser clearing will clear some of those, but it depends on the context in which they are used.

This isn’t the only way you could be tracked, however. There’s the question of metadata, which doesn’t show what you’ve looked at, but the context in which you did it. The Australian government, which happily gathers metadata from all of us (I’ve written about this before) and, as it turns out, hands it over to a surprisingly wide array of businesses seemingly as a matter of course, as we discussed in a recent Vertical Hold.

The short form of this is that if you do it online, there’s no real guarantee that you’re completely anonymous. That’s the nature of a public internet, and while there are more complex tools that can make it harder for you to be tracked, if you’re on the public internet you’re by definition to some degree public.

Tools such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) can mask your IP address to a certain extent, depending on how much you trust the endpoints to be actually secure, but the reality (as with so many things online) is that if it’s online and someone has an interest in tracking it, it’s feasible that they may be doing so.

On a more local to your PC level, it’s also worth pointing out that having no history at all is something of a red flag to the fact that you’ve deleted your history recently, which could naturally bring up just as many questions as whatever you were doing in the first place.

So, you’ve just bought a shiny new “Smart TV’ panel, but your Internet connection is nowhere near where you want to put your TV. Don’t panic — you’ve got plenty of solutions to pick from to get your Smart TV online.

The statistics suggest that an extraordinary percentage of the Smart TVs sold in Australia never go anywhere near an Internet connection. While that may be in part due to the somewhat lacklustre nature of Smart TV apps, there is one killer feature that I reckon is worth enabling, and that’s the catch-up TV services, especially the ABC’s iView. There are other offerings — Samsung, for example, has a lock on Foxtel Play — but pretty much everyone has iView. iView, of course, shows Doctor Who. I’m sure you’re following me from here.

But perhaps you aren’t, or to be more specific you can’t, because your home Internet connection sits in one room — if it’s ADSL, probably wherever the phone point is — and your Smart TV is in another, being dumb. Aside from having network cables installed in your wall cavities — never an inexpensive options — what can you do?

As a side note, any of the below options are also good if you’re struggling with an online-capable games console, streaming TV box or other IP-based bit of AV kit.

How do I clear my Internet History?

Option one: Check for wireless

Some Smart TVs come with inbuilt wireless, while others have it as an option via a USB dongle. Check the menus on the TV for a wireless option, or the box for a USB key that you never managed to plug in. If you’re buying a smart TV, ask about wireless, and see if they’ll chuck in the wireless adaptor as part of the deal. Wireless is going to be your easiest option, although that’s tempered by the fact that wireless reception can be interesting depending on the nature of your router, walls in-between router and TV and other interference sources such as microwave ovens or baby monitors.

Option two: Wireless Bridge

If you don’t have a wireless dongle — or that kind of capability even built into your TV — then you’ll be left with a standard RJ-45 Ethernet socket and not a lot else. That’s where picking up a wireless bridge (or converting an unused router into one) can be a solid step. A wireless bridge does what the name suggests; you connect it up to your wireless network as just another device — you’ll need another device on the network, preferably a PC to manage this step — and then use an ethernet cable from the bridge to your TV to share out the connection. If you’ve got an older router around, most can work in Bridge mode, although the procedure for doing that varies from model to model.

Option three: Powerline

I’m a big fan of the Powerline solution; up until my home connection shifted where it was it was the solution I used myself. Powerline is again one of those technologies that describes itself; a pair of small powerplugs (typically around the $100 mark) that you connect up at one end near your router, and the other near your smart TV. Network packets flow along your existing electrical wiring, and the signal is usually quite solid, although this can involve a little experimentation, as powerline equipment can have odd reactions to being in specific places on powerboards for example.

Not all Smart TV applications are worth getting wildly excited about, but the catch-up TV option is the one glittering diamond amongst the lot. You may not get much out of the rest of the varying Smart TV options, but if you can access it cheaply enough, it’s worth making the most out of your Smart TV.