What contributes to a browser history?

Browser History includes all the following:

• Browsing & Download History: Browsing history is the list of sites you've visited that show in the History menu, the Library window's History list, and the Location bar autocomplete's address list. Download history is the list of files you've downloaded that show in the Downloads window.

• Form & Search Bar History: Form history includes the items you've entered into web page forms for Form autocomplete. Search Bar history includes items you've entered into Firefox's Search bar.

• Cookies: Cookies are messages passed from a Web server to a browser which are stored on your hard drive in the form of a small text file. They can have many uses, the main one allowing a server to identify a user and present customized pages and/or login information to the user's browser when they revisit a Web page. These files can contain information that you may not want to leave behind.

• Cache: Cache is temporary storage on your hard disk where recently viewed Web pages are held. It allows you to quickly load a previously visited page without having to reload the page and its images from the Web server on subsequent visits. Reasons for clearing your browser's cache may go beyond simple privacy matters. Another reason involves performance. When the cache becomes full, you may notice your browser beginning to function slower. In addition to giving you the ability to clear the cache, many browsers let you specify the location on your hard disk where cache is stored, the amount of space allocated to it, as well as the frequency in which pages are saved.

• Active Logins: If you have logged in to a website that uses encryption since you most recently opened Firefox, that site is considered "active."

• Site Preferences: Site-specific preferences, including the saved zoom level for sites, character encoding, and the permissions for sites described in the Page Info window.

Index.dat file (Internet history file) stores information which can show where you have been online. Index.dat file is a system file and it can't be deleted manually as it is used by Windows all the time. Its content is not deleted even if you erase browser history folder content.