XPerties Posted November 23, 2002 Share Posted November 23, 2002 i found this on TechTV and thought you all might find it interesting....Cookies and your surfing history are hidden on your hard drive even after you clean out your temp files and IE history. Find out how to clean out these records.Remember that time you went to SexMonkey.com because you thought it was a website dedicated to the mating habits of South American primates? No? Well, Windows does. In fact, Windows remembers quite a bit of information about your surfing habits. Today, Kevin Rose from The Screen Savers drops by with a free download that'll make Windows forget all the information it gathered. What's at risk? In order to hide your surfing history, you delete your temp files and cookies and then clear your browser history. Now no one will ever know about your late-night visits to SexMonkey, right? Wrong! Windows keeps "secret" files on your hard drive that know exactly what you've been up to. There are a number of index.dat files located in several places on your hard drive that contain lists of cookies and the websites you've visited. Deleting your Internet Explorer History and temp files will not get rid of these files. Spider reads these files and cleans them out for you. The first time I ran the program it found hundreds of hidden URLs and cookies going back four years. Talk about incriminating evidence. A threat to your privacy These index.dat files are a serious threat to your privacy from anyone who knows how to access this information. If you're on a network, your co-workers can find them. Here's how to use the program and save yourself some embarrassment. You may even keep yourself out of some serious trouble. Using Spider Launch the program and hit the Preferences button.Choose which drive you want to search. I recommend searching the entire hard drive.Select what you want to remove: hidden URLs, temp files, history files, and cookies.Hit the Start Search button to unveil all the hidden information contained in the index.dat files.Click the Clean Up button to remove the hidden information.Restart the computer to complete the process.Protect yourself and your privacy. Download Spider now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted November 23, 2002 Share Posted November 23, 2002 I tried this out and it appears that Window Washer does the job for you. I did not see any websites on the found list that appear before my last WW cleanup.Rick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XPerties Posted November 23, 2002 Author Share Posted November 23, 2002 thanks for the test old buddy. This was my next step after install Windows washer. Good job Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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