How to Clear Your Bing Search History: An Easy Guide

If you’re wondering what happens to your data after you finish searching Bing and whether it offers a good level of privacy or not, you’ve come to the right place. 

In this guide, we’ll show you how to quickly view, manage, and delete your Bing history across all of your devices. We’ll also share everything you need to know about what data Bing collects and how you can improve your privacy when searching online.

Why Clear Your Bing History?

Unless you change your data collection and privacy settings for Microsoft Bing, it will keep a detailed log of your activity. This might contain more sensitive information than you realize. 

Let’s look at a few reasons you may want to limit what Bing collects by pausing or deleting your Bing search history:

• Limit personalized ads: Your search history feeds directly into Microsoft’s ad system, influencing the types of ads you see across Bing, Outlook, and even LinkedIn. If you pause your search history or change your personalization settings, it limits the amount of data at Microsoft’s disposal.
• Increase privacy on shared devices: Anytime you sign into a shared device, someone else could access your search history, especially if you forget to log out. Even if you log out of your Microsoft Account, some of your search history may be saved in the browser you’re using to access Bing (e.g., Edge).
• Minimize the risk of data theft: Cached search data can be a goldmine for cybercriminals; if they gain access to your search history, they could determine your routines, interests, or even personally identifying information. Clearing your stored Bing history reduces your risk of data theft.
• Clear your browsing history: Every site, from clothing stores to hotels, can show you results based on previous purchases. Clearing your search history can help prevent you from getting biased results based on past searches.

What Data Does Bing Collect?

Bing’s privacy policy shows it collects a fair amount of data, including keystrokes, voice data, and image queries you enter into the search engine. Here are the main types of data Bing collects:

Type of Data	Details
Search and interaction data	Your search queries, what you click on, how you interact with results, and commands you issue (voice or typed)
Device and usage data	Information about your device, OS, browser, hardware/software configuration, how you use the service, and performance issues (errors or crashes)
Location data	Your approximate or precise location (via GPS, IP address, Wi-Fi, or cell tower data) to improve relevance (e.g. local results) or for security
Account and profile info	If you have a Microsoft account: Name, contact info, language preference, age (if provided), and other demographic info
Content and media inputs	Things like voice commands, typed text, images you upload, metadata of images, and files or media you interact with when using Microsoft services
Cookies and identifiers	IP addresses, device identifiers, cookies, and possibly advertising IDs
Feedback, ratings, and diagnostic data	If you report something, fill out surveys, or if there are errors or crashes. Also usage patterns to detect bugs or improve services

Bing uses this data for product improvement, personalization services, analytics, and trend tracking. The good news is you can opt out of some forms of data collection in your account settings.

What Does “Clear Search History” Mean in Bing?

When you log into your Microsoft account and clear your Bing history, you’re deleting all search queries linked to the account. 

For example, if you’re logged into Bing via your Microsoft account on both your iPhone and PC, clearing the search history will remove it from both devices, leaving no history on either. 

However, if you’re only signed into your Microsoft account on one device and not others, the history will only be cleared on that specific device. If you don’t want to clear your search history across all devices, make sure you’re signed out of your Microsoft account on the other devices.

How to Find Your Bing History

1. Open bing.com, make sure you’re logged in, and click the menu icon (three bars).

   

2. Click Search History.

   

3. Under Insights, you’ll see a circle with the number of searches saved in your history. Below Activity, you’ll see a full list of the searches you’ve made.

   

How to Clear Your Bing History in a Browser

You need to access your Bing account to delete your history, so the steps are the same regardless of which browser or operating system you’re using.

1. Locate your search history (following the steps above).
2. Find Clear your search history and select Clear All.

   

3. When prompted, click on Clear All.

   

How to Delete Individual Searches in Your Bing History

You can also delete individual entries from your Bing search history. To do that:

1. Find your search history (following the steps above).
2. Scroll down to under Activity to find your search timeline.

   

3. Hover your cursor over the search you want to delete and click on the bin icon next to it.

   

How to Clear Your Bing History in the Mobile App

Note: These screenshots are for Android, but iOS also offers a free Bing search engine app via the Apple App Store. Instructions to clear your Bing history on the iOS app are virtually the same (only the overall appearance may differ).

1. Open the Bing app on your device.

   

2. Tap on the account icon.

   

3. Choose Settings from the menu.

   

4. Tap Privacy.

   

5. Tap on Clear data.

   

6. Tap Clear now.

   

7. In the pop-up, tap Clear now to confirm.

   

How to Turn Off Bing Search History

Bing allows you to turn off your search history in just a few steps. If you only want to pause your search history, you can follow the same steps to reverse the setting.

1. Open the Bing search engine and click the Menu icon, then select Search history.

   

2. Next to Show new searches here, toggle the button to off.

   

3. In the prompt, confirm your choice by pressing the Turn off button.

   

What Happens After You Clear Your Bing Data?

It’s important to note that even if you clear your Bing search history, some forms of data may still be backed up on Microsoft’s system. Microsoft doesn’t say how long most of that data stays, except that it removes IP addresses after about 6 months and strips cookie IDs and cross-session identifiers after about 18 months.

This means even if you delete your information, the company may hold your data for over a year before it’s permanently removed from its backup system. That’s 6–18 months of your online data sitting in a pool after you already removed it from your device.

How Do I Request My Bing Data?

Microsoft can give you a copy of the data Bing has collected from your activity, including your searches, interactions, and related account information. This lets you see what’s stored so you can decide what to do with it.

1. Open the Bing search engine and click the Menu icon, then select Privacy.

   

2. Scroll down the Privacy page and click on Browsing and search.

   

3. On the Browsing page, scroll down and select Download your data under Recent Activities.

   

4. Click on the Create an archive button.

   

5. Select the items you’d like to archive from the prompt that appears, then click the Create an archive button.

   

6. You will see an archive file being generated under Archives. Once it’s complete, you can download the information by clicking Download.

   

Note: You have 7 days from the date of creation to download the archive before it expires.

Other Ways to Safeguard Your Online Data

Clearing or disabling your Bing search history is a great first step in protecting your privacy online. To go further, it’s important to follow cybersecurity best practices to ensure you’re doing everything possible to protect your online data. Here are a few ways you can help protect your sensitive information in addition to clearing your Bing history.

Create Strong Passwords

Since your Bing history is tied to your Microsoft account, a compromised password could expose a lot of personal data to cybercrooks. Even if you delete your search data, it could provide access to your emails and other personal information tied to Microsoft services. Any account you hold online can potentially reveal sensitive information.

To create a secure password, use 12+ characters and use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Avoid using anything easily recognizable like social media handles, your first or last name, sequential numbers or letters, or the name of your high school or college.

Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Accounts storing search history can reveal information about your daily routines, financial situation, and health concerns, so it’s important to properly secure them. 

2FA requires you to authorize your login with a one-time passcode (OTP), which you receive via a text, call, push notification, or email after entering your username and password. This helps prevent any unauthorized parties from accessing your account, even if they did have access to your login details.

HTTPS-Only

While Bing uses HTTPS by default, your searches may lead you to other sites which don’t. Any time you search or submit personal information on an unsecured site, your data is exposed to anyone monitoring your network. If you’re using public Wi-Fi or another shared network, this could lead to your information being intercepted by cybercrooks.

Use sites with HTTPS connections whenever possible. Some browsers like Firefox, Brave, and Tor offer an HTTPS-only option, while Chrome and Safari automatically prioritize HTTPS over HTTP.

Use a VPN

Even if you delete your history and log out of your Microsoft account, Bing still logs your IP address and activity – a common practice on many websites. The best way to break any potential link back to your identity is with a VPN.

When you connect to a VPN server, it hides your IP address and encrypts your online traffic in the process, making it unreadable to anyone who may intercept it. A good VPN will also have a no-logs policy. That means it never keeps track of your online activities.

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