Recently PC magazine posted an article describing how to remove the browser cache history. It stated, " Open internet options, click settings in Temporary
Internet Files, click move folder then navigate to external drive. I have Windows Vista and the forgoing procedures do not apply. Any suggestions, anybody? ( bc7.62 0
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Clearing Browser Cache History
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bc762, that is *terrible* advice from PC Magazine! The procedure that you mention does not "remove" the browser cache history but moves the location of the temporary internet files folder. Moving the temporary internet files folder to an *external* drive is also a bad idea. This folder is accessed frequently during browsing, and putting it on an external drive will slow down access to those files. This could slow down your browsing experience.
bc762, Are you talking about the "PC Magazine" at pcmag.com ?
If so that sounds like a strange thing for them to post. I've looked at pcmag.com before and they don't normally post bad advice.
Do you have a link to this article? I would like to check this out and see why they would have said to do that.
Re: Clearing Browser History from bc7.62 ( pcworld.com)
This article appeared in PC World Magazine March 2009 Page 64 last column on right, subject ( fix ).
As I am new to this I don't have a clue as to what IE8 is or how to use it.
The reason for this inquiry is I have a friend that is retired from U.S. State Dept. and he has told me that the Government does spy on domestic internet
traffic and at times will open a case folder for investigation purposes to monitor traffic. This has made me as paranoid as he is. He rarely uses his computer as a result. I am looking for a way to completely obliterate all footprints while surfing that cannot be recovered. Have tried some programs that
have played havoc with my machine. Now what? And thanks for the help. bc7.62
Government does spy on domestic internet traffic and at times will open a case folder for investigation purposes to monitor traffic
Well, it is hard to say what he was talking about but here is what I know about United States Government spying:
The government monitors all kinds of traffic from radio, cell phones, internet, text messaging, etc.
They are not suppose to be monitoring traffic from United States citizens though just traffic from other nations and suspected enemies of the United States.
Who those enemies are seems to mostly be a secret though as it's a private agencies like the NSA and CIA that find them.
The government has been found in recent years to be spying on normal citizens and has been heavily criticised for it.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.....ontroversy for some more information on that.
Also should you be suspected of a crime then local authorities can get orders that allow them to legally attempt to gain information on you that proves you did or did not commit the crime.
One thing about the spying to keep in mind though is that every device connected to the internet has it's own IP Address.
Every time you visit a web site or download something online the other end of the connection gets your IP Address to identify where to send pages and downloads to.
And Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) keeps logs of everything happening over it's connection listed with your name and IP Address which they can hand over the government should they be legally required to so so.
So should the government by able to find out that a certain site was visited via with a specific IP Address, they could potentially ask your ISP which person was using that IP Address and what their name, street address, etc on file with the ISP is.
In this case clearing your temporary files would only solve part of the problem.
There are proxy web sites you can use to surf so your ISP doesn't know you surfed them but they is a little complicated to explain.
In short: I wouldn't worry about it. There are so many people in this country that surf the internet, the odds you would be spied specificly when you are just doing normal tasks and no crime are fairly low.
The big thing is to avoid uploading or sending data that you can be a problem. Like uploading copyrighted music to a P2P network like LimeWire, even if you just download a song, it will be automaticly shared and many people have got found out by the MPAA because of the automatic sharing.
Also if you commit a crime like murder or making a bomb for example and you had done a bunch of searches online about how to do that then should you be a suspect in the crime then that would not be good for your case.
I just found the article on PC World:
Title: How to Plug Security Holes in Your Browser
Tagline:
To protect your browsing history, try the free Private Browsing feature in Apple's Safai or the Distrust add-on for Firefox. For complete anonymity, try the fee-based Anonymizer or the free Tor.
Introduction:
You depend on your Web browsers to link you with the information you need every day. But don't let your browsers bank information about you that may be damaging or embarrassing.
Article By:
Andrew Brandt, PC World
Here is the relevant excerpt (from the end of the article after it talks about other ways including using the Private Browsing features in available browsers):
The best way to keep things clean is to prevent the browser from leaving anything on the hard drive. There are two ways to achieve this objective: Instruct IE to save its cache to a portable drive that you keep plugged in whenever you need to use the browser, or use a software utility to wipe the cache securely after you're done surfing.You can do the former (using IE) in four steps: Open the Internet Options control panel, click the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section, click the Move Folder button, and navigate to a folder on your external drive. To do the latter, try an excellent free tool called Eraser, which securely deletes browser cache files (and other data) by overwriting the files numerous times.
This itself is not a bad idea but you should be aware of a few things before doing so:
1. The Internet Cache is used by Windows for many processes, the most known being Internet Explorer. If you most the cache to a portable hard drive then you should never remove that portable hard drive from the computer without first logging out of Windows.
Should you use something like Mozilla Firefox then it's not as big of a deal as you can just close Mozilla Firefox and you will be fine because it's cache is used by Mozilla Firefox only.
2. The problem that most people (including based on that article, Andrew Brandt of PC World) don't realize is just how integrated the Windows Shell and Internet Explorer really are.
Note: Just for reference the Windows Shell is located in the file system at %WINDIR%\explorer.exe and is called "Windows Explorer", it provides a file browser, the taskbar, the desktop icons, the desktop context menu and in some cases the desktop wallpaper. It's the user interface that 99% of people refer to when they think of Microsoft Windows but few understand it.
Whenever you make any change to Internet Explorer, no matter how small it will also have many unexpected effects on the Windows Shell and any programs that use the APIs provided by the Windows Shell.
For example: I installed Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer but it also loads whenever the Windows Shell launches and because there was a bug in Google Toolbar that caused the Windows Shell to crash, when I logged in to the computer all I saw was a blank desktop that I could do nothing with. I had to press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to open the Task Manager and launch ShellExView to disable Google Toolbar so I could use the Windows Shell.
I still don't understand how moving the Temporary Internet Files directory to a portable hard drive buys you so much more privacy. When the Men In Black show up to take your hard drive for evidence, are they going to ignore the portable drive that's plugged in there? Or, are you supposed to hide the portable drive in hopes that the warrant says that the MIB can only search the hard drives that are permanently installed in your computer and are forbidden to look at the portable hard drive that is hidden in your sock drawer?
Oh, wait, here's an idea. Get one of those really small flash drives, the smaller the better, and when the MIB show up to arrest you just swallow it! <gulp!> and there goes the evidence. Ha ha! Just because your paranoid doesn't mean they aren't watching you....
I still don't understand how moving the Temporary Internet Files directory to a portable hard drive buys you so much more privacy.
My guess is that should the portable drive go missing (easier to hide then a whole computer) then anything you visited would not be found by others.
There is still the issue of the cookies, the history of urls you visted, favorites, etc though.
It would be far better to just use Firefox Portable as it stores everyone the Flash Drive by default but still not the safest way to did it.
You would need to boot from a LiveCD and only surf from there as it's stored in RAM that would be erased on boot to be the safest and even then there is still the issue of an IP Address not to mention I've read recently that RAM chips can be taken out and the contents read if done within a few hours of the computer being turned off.
When the Men In Black show up to take your hard drive for evidence, are they going to ignore the portable drive that's plugged in there?
Probably not :)
Like you said the only options for this are:
1. Destroy the drive.
The only problem is that you would have to very quiet about it and need to hide any parts laying around or you could still get into trouble.
2. Hide it very well.
Though I very much doubt it would help much against people trained to find things that are hidden in houses.
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