No, your parents cannot view your internet history just because you use their wifi on a consumer level. To view your internet history they need to access your device, contact your WiFi service provider or use a Software or Program that can track the internet history of devices.
Can Your Parents See Your Internet History on WiFi?
The clear answer to this will be ‘NO’ through your Wifi router your parents won’t be able to view your internet history as most of the residential routers used in our houses don’t have that much capacity to store information.
However, they can access your internet browsing history through the device you have used to search it on like your mobile phone, laptop, or iPad.
Ways In Which Your Parents Can Access Your Internet History
There are certain ways in which your parents can view your internet history. It is important to know about them if you wish to keep your privacy safe. Let’s take a look at them in detail:-
Access Your Devices
As we have mentioned earlier, your parents can get a complete hold of your internet history if they access your devices which include your mobile phone, laptop, computer, iPad, or tablet you used to browse on the internet.
But to prevent this from happening one of the most simple ways would be to make all your devices password protected or better if they are only open if it’s you yes you are right we are talking about face and fingerprint locks.
Requesting it from Wifi Provider
This is unlikely to happen but it is possible to happen. Usually, WiFi providers pledge secrecy but if the owner of the account requests it then they are bound to provide them with this information.
Your parents can contact your service provider and get information about the sites visited.
Using Software that Monitors Internet History
Your parents can take help from the software and programs available online that can track the internet history of devices located in a certain network.
There are software and programs to get access to your internet history even for Mobile phones, computers, laptops, iPad, and tablets.
These are how your parents can access your internet browsing history.
How to Hide Your Internet History Entirely?
Now we will show you how you can protect your privacy from your parents, other people in your network, and even your WiFi service provider.
Using the ToR Browser
This will be the best option for you if you wish to completely hide your internet history from your parents, people in the networks, service providers, and also the companies that might be interested in your online activities. All you need to do is download, install and use the ToR browser. It is an end-to-end encrypted browser that automatically anonymizes the web traffic and hides all your internet history.
Using a VPN
Your other option will be to use a VPN. VPN is short for Virtual Private Network. As its name suggests it aims at keeping your data private by encrypting your traffic on both ends.
Using HTTPS Everywhere
If you want to do the bare minimum to protect your privacy from online searches then this is the option for you. For every website you visit do not forget to use HTTPS rather than HTTP. The benefit of this is it keeps all your data safe from not only your parents but also the businesses that are interested in your online activities. It is the most efficient and effective way of protecting your privacy.
You can use HTTPS manually or you can also use an App and a program called HTTPS Everywhere which does all your work for you and converts all the websites to HTTPS despite them being HTTP websites.
HTTPS Everywhere can be accessed on most of the browsers available out there including Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera.
These were the probable ways in which your parents can access your browsing history but you can keep your privacy safe with the options we provided here.