If you are using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), it is possible that every chat you participate in is being recorded and saved on your computer. Depending on how your settings are configured, you could be saving all of your instant messenger conversations, all of your AOL chat conversations or both. To delete your AOL IM history, you can perform the following steps:

1) Open AOL Instant Messenger
2) From the Edit menu, select Settings…

You can delete your AutoComplete history manually, though the next time you go online, AutoComplete will revert to saving your searches, forms and web addresses. For those with privacy concerns about their AutoComplete history being saved, or just annoyed by the drop down when you do a search at Google or try to type in a web address, you might want to turn this feature off.

You may have noticed that when you type a search into a web site search box (such as Google or Yahoo!), a list of previously searched for terms are displayed. These previous searches are not saved by any web site, but are actually saved by your web browser through a feature called AutoComplete.

You may have noticed that when you type a search into a Yahoo search box, a list of previously searched for terms are displayed. These previous searches are not saved by Yahoo, but are actually saved by your web browser through a feature called AutoComplete. To manually delete Yahoo search history, you can perform the following steps:

The Google toolbar saves all of your personal searches so that when you type a search query, it can guess what you are typing and offer suggestions in real-time. Unfortunately, this has caused many privacy concerns for users. Not only does it permit Google to collect personal private data for those using the Google toolbar, but the history is made easily available to anyone with access to that computer.

You may have noticed that when you type a search into Google’s search box, a list of previously searched for terms are displayed. These previous searches are not saved by Google, but are actually saved by your web browser through a feature called AutoComplete. To manually delete your saved Google searches (AutoComplete history), you can perform the following steps:

With all of the recent news stories about identity theft, it got me thinking about my PC. What kinds of information did I have stored on it? And is it really something that a hacker might want?

Imagine someone else sitting down to your computer and opening up all your temporary Internet files. This person would be able to see everything you had seen in your recent Internet sessions. They would see pictures, video, text and more just as you had seen it.

Whether you know it or not, your computer stores information about you every time you go onto the Internet. Little pieces of information like login names, passwords, shopping preferences, visited websites, and even credit card numbers are stored in places like browser history and other temporary Internet files. If you care about your PC privacy, then you need a way to delete history and other Internet traces.

Even though you would never know it, many things happen every time you use the Internet. As soon as you sign on, little programs within the depths of your computer come to life and quietly start collecting all kinds of information about you. A quick search of your computer would reveal the following types of information: