I have a need to retain Internet Explorer history for a long period of time for auditing purposes, outside of what our reporting appliances are already doing, mostly for a psychological deterrent to users.
The site in question is a domain with a mix of Windows XP & Windows 7 PC's. The group policy server is a Windows 2003 Server which has received updated inetres.adm and furthermore administered by a Windows 7 Professional PC with group policy console for newer group policy control for the Windows 7 systems.
This is my preferred scenario:
- User cannot delete history and history is retained for 120 days.
- User can delete temporary internet files.
- User can reset Internet Explorer settings.
- Points 2 and 3 do not affect point 1.
Basically, using the obvious settings in User Configuration | Administrative Templates | Internet Explorer | Delete Browsing History to:
- Turn off "Delete Browsing History" functionalityEnabled
- Prevent Deleting Web sites that the User has VisitedEnabled
- Disable "Configuring History" Enabled
- Prevent Deleting Temporary Internet Files Disabled
- Prevent Deleting CookiesDisabled
- Prevent the deletion of temporary Internet Files and cookiesDisabled
- Configure Delete Browsing History on exit PropertiesDisabled
All of these options do not provide the intended requirements I've listed above.
So in other words, I never want users to be able to use any form of trickery or intelligence to delete their history (other than deleting the history file which is basically unpreventable) yet I want them to be able to delete their temporary internet files,
their cookies and reset their web settings, none of which should affect history.
Intuitively, I'd expect Microsoft to allow us to distinguish between browsing history and temporary files since they've done this with group policies and buttons in Internet Explorer, and theyreally are as far as the English language is concerned.
Thanks in advance.