Browsers arguably are the most popular programs on any Windows device, and surely on personal computers and gadgets. Less arguably is that they are the most vicious spies on your internet activity. They inconspicuously store lists of sites you have visited, files you have downloaded, words and phrases you have searched for, and collect some other data that may be quite sensitive to you. This is not someone's evil conspiracy, this is how developers try to make their browsers work faster and more convenient to use. Quite often they tend to prefer your and their convenience over your privacy.

In addition, browsers permanently store their temporary files and caches which may occupy a lot of storage space. This is especially important for SSD devices that are usually less in their size than conventional HDDs.

Today, when the on-line privacy and security have become a great public concern, almost all browsers have some means to clear their sensitive data and delete temporary data. Unfortunately, they do that inconveniently and incompletely. You have to go to browser's settings manually, find a special section in them, and click a special button. And many important traces will remain still uncleared. Table below shows what will remain uncleared in two popular browsers when you try to use their internal clearing.

Any of this data may reveal something you don't want to.

One important detail: if your computer has a conventional HDD rather than SSD as its storage device, all files should be wiped rather than simply deleted, or even the simplest file recovery program will be able to retrieve all "deleted" data quite easily.

That is why you need a program that will perform such clearing completely and conveniently. And R-Wipe & Clean is one of the best such programs. Its main advantages are the following:

* Large number of supported browsers. It clears activity traces from all most popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.), and many less popular browsers like Google Chrome clones and Mozilla Firefox forks. You see the complete list of supported browsers in R-Wipe & Clean Help page Clearing Internet Activity. As soon as a certain browser becomes popular, it will be added to the list.

* Convenient in use. One click is enough to select all the necessary items to clear. You may also look at what you are going to clear.

Fig.1. Items to clear in Microsoft Edge
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When all items you want to clear are selected, just click the Wipe&Clean Now button, and R-Wipe & Clean will start clearing your computer.

Moreover, R-Wipe & Clean warns you if you select items that may affect smooth operation of your system or possibly contain your important information.

Fig.2. Critical items that may affect smooth operation of your system
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* Complete clearing. When clearing their traces, browsers don't delete some diagnostic and statistics information that their developers believe will help them to improve browser's next versions. Such information may contain your sensitive data you don't want to share with anyone. Some other information (see the Table above) also remains. R-Wipe & Clean removes all this information completely.

Moreover, not only the browser keeps traces of downloaded files, the system keeps them, too. Browsers don't clear system traces, R-Wipe & Clean does. Such traces may be found in the Recent Documents, Jump Lists Documents, Open File History, and Shell File History items in the Recent Activity part of the R-Wipe & Clean user's section.

Fig.3. Traces of the downloaded files in the system
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Almost all modern browsers use file's Alternative Data Stream to store the zone identifier the file was downloaded from (My Computer, Local Intranet Zone, Trusted sites Zone, Internet Zone, Restricted Sites Zone). R-Wipe & Clean has a special tool, File Streams Cleaner, that wipes such alternative data streams.

Fig.4. File Streams Cleaner
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Also R-Wipe & Clean deletes not only the files, it removes their traces from the file system, too. Such traces may contain some sensitive information. If the storage device is a conventional HDD, the content of the files will be irrevocably wiped out to prevent them from being recovered. R-Wipe & Clean can tell SSD and HDD and treats them accordingly.

* Flexible control over what is to be deleted and what should be kept. For example, many web sites keep your personal settings in their cookies. You may specify the cookies that should not be deleted.

Fig.5. Cookie favorites
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To do that for example in Google Chrome settings, you need to remove all other cookies manually, and in Mozilla Firefox, you will have to keep all cookies from the same web site, even when you need only one cookie to be identified.

* Support for multiple browser accounts. R-Wipe & Clean supports multiple browser accounts and can clear data only from a specified browser account.

* Automation. R-Wipe & Clean allows you to combine all that browser clearing actions into one single task and schedule it to the closure of the required browser.

Fig.6. Scheduled task
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Every time you close Microsoft Edge this task will be started and R-Wipe & Clean will clear all specified traces. Or you may run this task manually. You may read more about tasks and Scheduler on R-Wipe & Clean Help page Wiping Tasks and Scheduler.

More computer clearing and data wiping tasks. Browser data clearing is not the only task R-Wipe & Clean can do. For more details about R-Wipe & Clean's full capabilities, read our article "Computer Privacy and Identity Theft Protection". Specifically, if you need additional free disk space you may read our article "Simple Disk Cleanup or How to Free Up Disk Space Quickly and Conveniently".

You may also find this information helpful:
* R-Wipe & Clean manual.
* R-Wipe & Clean on-line help.
Also, join the discussion about R-Wipe & Clean on the R-TT Forum.