How do I see a list of every page visited on my IP address?

Question

How do you see a list of every page that visited on your home's network (even ones deleted from the browser history?) I want to see what websites my household has been visiting.

Answer 1

By default, routers keep a log of Internet access activity. If your family connects through a Netgear, Linksys, DLink or similar router to a cable or DSL modem, just log on to your router and look at its log.

If you know the router's administrative username and password, use a browser on any connected computer and "point" to it. Usually the router is at

http://192.168.0.1 or

http://192.168.1.1 or [less common]

http://10.0.0.1

In my case, the first link is to my AT&T DSL modem [which has only one port], while the last is to my Netgear wireless router [that's connected to the DSL modem/router so I can have many computers connected to the DSL modem and Internet at the same time]. You want to view your LAN logs. Both my routers have logs, but the AT&T's DSL logs don't show local network (LAN) activities, just its WAN connections.

You ask, "does it show pages deleted from the browser history?", and the answer is yes. The router's log has nothing to do with a browser or what might exist on individual computers or - for that matter - what program is doing the Internet request. The router simply logs all local activity going onto the Internet, tagging each entry by your LAN device's current IP address - whether the traffic originates from a browser, Internet game, malware program, PS3 - whatever. It doesn't matter.

Your local IP addresses will change if they are assigned by the router's DHCP service. DHCP assigns temporary IP's according to an available pool of addresses on a first-come basis. For example, my wife's Disney game "Pirates of the Caribbean" is played on the Internet (what a bandwidth hog!) without a browser and only on her computer, but I see all her accesses - including her browser accesses. Her computer is logged as 10.0.0.3 today but was 10.0.0.5 yesterday and 10.0.0.2 two weeks ago.

If I wanted to know definitely which computer is which without any serious thinking, I'd ask my router to assign a pre-selected, perhaps odd IP address according to the detected network interface card's MAC address - or I could choose an IP address during Ethernet card setup at that computer - or I could monitor my network's computers by MAC address if my router also logs MAC's  (but only customized open-source firmware typically logs MAC addresses AFAIK).

There are ways for users to spoof MAC and IP addresses - but your router will still log all Internet traffic destinations along with the requesting IP address and/or MAC address that it sees. In case of spoofing, you'd just have to do a little logical thinking and footwork to sort it all out - not a big challenge on a small home network.

Before you ask - yes, the router can be accessed, examined and its settings altered [including clearing of the log] from the Internet - if remote access is enabled (on by default) and if the administrative password is known (default passwords of every commercial router model are available on the Internet).

All the bad guy on the Internet needs is your Internet device's (the broadband or dial-up modem's) ISP-assigned IP address - and that can be stumbled upon without any real effort. So ALWAYS change your router's default password - ALWAYS.

Good luck!