Protect your Computer and Internet Privacy

Author: Alex Marias

Article:
Is a known fact that every time you open a browser to view a web
page, order something online, or read your email in a web based
viewer that information is stored on your computer for later
use. Whether you are viewing the weather online, reading sports,
catching up on the latest world news or viewing something a
little more private, all that information is stored in your
computer. Windows operating systems store all this material in
what are called Temporary Internet Files or cache. Web pages may
store bits of information about who you are when you visit web
sites in files called cookies on your computer. Your web browser
will store a list of web sites you've visited and places you've
gone in a history file in your computer. Even if you are not
online, programs will store histories of the files you've
opened, played, or viewed.

Generally there might not be any reason to worry about all these
files in your computer, but what if you sell your computer and
all that information is left for someone else to see. Maybe
friends and relatives visit and use your computer and you dont
want everyone to know what files you are running on your
computer. Then you are going to want to know how to delete these
files.

Even if you are not worried about privacy on your computer, you
may be surprised to realize how much hard drive space all this
information takes up. If you are running out of drive space, you
may want to delete these files.

How can I delete these files?

For Internet Explorer 5 and above, you can follow these
directions to clear out temporary files and delete cookies.

1) Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools 2) Click on
Internet Options 3) On the General Tab, in the middle of the
screen, click on Delete Files 4) You may also want to check the
box "Delete all offline content" 5) Click on OK and wait for the
hourglass icon to stop after it deletes the temporary internet
files 6) You can now click on Delete Cookies and click OK to
delete cookies that websites have placed on your hard drive.

To clear the Internet History in IE:

1) Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools 2) Click on
Internet Options 3) On the General Tab, in the middle of the
screen, click on Clear History 4) Click OK

To clean up other temporary files on your computer in Windows 98
or higher:

1) Click Start, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System
Tools, Disk Cleanup 2) Choose the correct drive usually C:\ 3)
Check the boxes in the list and delete the files

This deleting method is only good if you want to free space,
because normal file deletion only removes a file's directory
entry, and leaves the data contained in the file on your hard
drive, which can be easily recovered by any average computer
user using a undelete utility. If you delete cookies or if you
delete history using conventional methods anyone can recover
them! Even after a hard drive format, files can be recovered
using expensive hardware and software which use forensic latency
track analysis algorithms.


There are several good utilities such as Privacy
Guard
About the author:
Alexandru Marias is an IT student maintaining software sites such
as: www.downloadsplaza.com , www.fungamesplaza.com and
www.bluedownloads.com