Unified Browser and Windows History Viewer

Keeping track of all your history items can be quite the feat if you are using more than one browser. Privacy conscious users usually delete the information regularly, while the majority of users is likely unaware what their web browser and operating system can reveal about them.

History Viewer is a free program for the Windows operating system that reveals what the three browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and the Windows operating system, have recorded.

When you first start the program you will notice that entries are divided into four groups in the left side bar. The main area is empty until you click on one of the entries in the sidebar.

Lets take a closer look at each group and the history information it offers:

• Internet Explorer: Displays the url history, text that has been entered into the browser’s address bar, web cookies as well as the contents of the index.dat file.
• Firefox: Lists the url, input and form history, as well as cookies and downloads.
• Google Chrome: Displays the url history, top visited sites, keyword searches, cookies and downloads.
• Microsoft Windows: All recent documents that have been opened, the search, run, open and save, and list visited history, the usb storage device history, first folder information and typed paths.

The listings can reveal plenty of information, for instance which websites have been visited, what the user has been searching for on the Internet, which devices have been plugged into the computer in the past and which files have been downloaded to the local computer.

The program can create a report of its findings which is saved as a plain HTML file on the system. There are no options to delete individual entries or all entries. For that, I suggest to run a program like the free CCleaner which can take care of most of the entries that you see. Keep History Viewer open, run CCleaner and check back in the program if the listings have been removed. You do need to close all supported web browsers if they are running on the system.

History Viewer is compatible with all versions of the Microsoft operating system starting with Windows 98. (via Instant Fundas)