How to track websites that have been visited?

Question

My child has been acting weird recently. He surfs the internet until midnight. When I try to check his computer, his internet browser history is all blank. I strongly believe he deleted all the browsing history, cache and everything.

Is it possible to know what websites that my child has been visiting recently after he cleared his internet browser's history, cache and everything?

Answer 1

You can create an OpenDNS account, point your child's system to use OpenDNS and keep a track of websites used using that.

Answer 2

As everything is deleted, you have no way to know it at this time (except for asking the logs of your ISP, but I guess that's a bit over the top).

The only way to know this in the future without the child being able to circumvent it (as they always find ways ;-) is to enable logging on an intermediate device like a router.

Answer 3

try ipconfig /displaydns from command line - if there's too many, you can send it to a text file from ipconfig /displaydns > dnslist.txt . Or.. you could talk to your kid, and let him or her know you're concerned.

Answer 4

Try putting a password on the computer. Only allow him to log on when it is needed. Remember that using Facebook is a want, not a need

Answer 5

Use Family Keylogger will let you monitor what people you share your computer with type when you are away. Working in the background, Family Keylogger will record every keystroke a user makes in every application and save it to a text file. In Stealth mode, the program is totally invisible to other people who are not aware their computer activity is monitored.

Answer 6

Even when using private browsing modes, and even when deleting a browser's history, cache and cookies, Adobe Flash still keeps a cross-browser trace. It won't show you any dates (though maybe that information is kept as well), but it does show which Flash-enabled sites your computer account has visited since you bought it.

Maybe the introduction of How to automatically remove Flash history/privacy trail? Or stop Flash from storing it? helps investigating, though I meant to write that to protect ones privacy.

Answer 7

If you have a firewall/router, you can usually set it up to log all the outgoing/incoming traffic on your network. Depending on the router, you can even set it to the send the logs to specific ip or host on the network, there are a variety of programs out there to do this: One I've used with some success is Wallwatcher. It works with many devices, and is pretty customizable.