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?

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By the way: using the internet is more than just browsing (like: chats?) – Arjan Oct 8 '09 at 8:04
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8 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

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

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Great idea. OpenDNS will also allow you to block specific sites if you find them troubling. – Josh K Oct 7 '09 at 12:34
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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.

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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.

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I like this: ipconfig /displaydns > dnslist.txt Very cool!! Now, where is the file located? – michael.daddy Oct 8 '09 at 7:54
@michael - it should be at the same location wherever you executed the command. – Sathya Oct 8 '09 at 8:06
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if you run that command, run this immediately afterwards: "notepad dnslist.txt" – quack quixote Oct 8 '09 at 20:11
ipconfig/displaydns can be countered by ipconfig/flushdns though – He's-lookin'-at-pr0n Mar 4 '10 at 6:46
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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

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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.

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aside from the ethical and legal issues of a keylogger, how do you know you can trust it? Also, any good AV would trip on this, and throw a hissyfit. – Journeyman Geek Oct 8 '09 at 3:43
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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.

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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.

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Why the hell make it so hard for this guy..

there something called Parental Control in Control Panel,

Parelal Control allow u as the admin to effect these hours on the computer, if you want full control of your son computer change ur son accout under Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\User Accounts\Manage Accounts\Change an Account\Change Account Type change it to standard :

or if you really want to catch him in the acted them use remote desktop all you need is a notebook or desktop, them all u need to know IP and Port in ur router, login into ur router find the info once you got the IP and port login to remote desktop.

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