Ways to stay safe online and how our Exit this page button works.
If you're worried about someone finding out you've been on bristol.gov.uk or another website, there are ways to stop them.
Stay safe online
It can be easy for someone to see what you're doing online, especially if you're using a home computer.
You can make it more difficult for them by taking some precautions.
If you think your devices or internet search activities are being monitored, try to use a public device, such as a library computer.
This is the safest thing to do if you do not want someone to know that you're visiting certain webpages or websites.
Exit this page button
On some sensitive pages on our website, there's an ‘Exit this page' button.
The Exit this page button allows you to quickly hide the page you're on.
Be careful though, because this will not completely hide how you got to the page. You'll still need to delete your internet browser history.
When you select the Exit this page button
When you select the Exit this page button it will open a new browser tab on the BBC weather page and redirect the current page to Google.
You can also activate Exit this page by pressing the Shift button on your keyboard 3 times or by using the hidden link, for users of assistive technology .
To return to the page you were on, you can search for it again.
Hide what you've been looking at online
Every time you use the internet, your browser stores a record of where you've been online with:
- a list of the pages you've looked at and the files you've downloaded
- small files called cookies which remember your settings for different sites
Browse in private
You can improve your safety by looking at a website without information like cookies being stored by using the private browsing setting in your browser. Go to the browser menu and choose:
- Private Window on Safari
- Incognito on Google Chrome
- InPrivate on Microsoft Edge
- Private Browsing on Mozilla Firefox or Opera
However, anything you download and save will not be private.
You need to close your private browser to remove your history. If you do not, someone can use the 'back' button and be taken back through any websites you've visited.
You can use private browsing on a desktop, tablet or smartphone.
Deleting your internet browsing history
You can improve your safety by clearing your history. But you need to be careful because:
- deleting cookies will also get rid of stored passwords for online accounts
- clearing your history could make someone more suspicious
You can also delete your internet browsing history. But you need to be careful because:
- deleting cookies will also get rid of stored passwords for online accounts
- clearing your history could make someone more suspicious
Try to only remove information about the websites you want to keep private. You can find out how to do that on:
Search toolbars
If you do not use private browsing and use a search toolbar in your web browser, your searched items can be saved as part of your history.
Autocomplete can show what you've recently searched for when something is typed into a search engine, like Google.
You can log out of your accounts to stop this.
Otherwise, find out how to delete your searched items from: