Index.dat

Did you know a series of secret, hidden files are silently collecting data about your web browsing history? Did you know that even if you clear your web history and delete your temporary internet files that a log still exists documenting every website you’ve ever visited and every email you’ve ever sent or received through Outlook or Outlook Express.

Alarmed yet? Your privacy is at risk. Anyone can easily get to these files and find out your entire internet history! This includes spouses, co-workers, employers, family members, friends and even law enforcement. They can view your internet history and come up with conclusions about you based on the types of websites you’ve been too and view emails you thought were long gone.

This information is compiled and stored in index.dat files that are hidden on your Windows operating system. A casual search won’t turn them up because they are hidden. Even enabling the search of hidden files won’t turn them up either because they are considered to be “system files” by Windows. They are there though, waiting for the right person, with the right tools, to dig them up and reveal their hidden contents.

You may be wondering what the fuss is about if they are so well hidden and hard to find. Anyone who wants to uncover these files, such as law enforcement computer forensics experts, knows just where to look and has the software to read the data.

In fact, in Windows 2000 and Windows XP you’ll find several index.dat files in the Documents and Settings folder under the Cookies, Local Settings and Local Internet Files folders. Simple index.dat viewers are readily available for free download on the internet making viewing these files a matter of point and click.

You can’t manually erase index.dat files. Even if you clean out the cache, cookies, and history from Internet Explorer regularly, the index.dat files remain storing information about the websites you’ve visited and the cookies deposited. Internet Explorer 7.0 appears to have resolved this issue with its new expanded deletion tools however you will still want to delete the index.dat files for the most protection possible, especially if you use other browsers.

So if you can’t easily find the index.dat files and they can’t be manually deleted, what are you supposed to do? Software tools have been developed to scan, preview and erase all index.dat files found on your PC! Let the utilities do the hard work for you and protect your privacy for good.

We recommend ParetoLogic Privacy Controls as our first choice in complete protection. Privacy Controls includes safeguards to ensure against accidental file deletions and it will completely shred your selected files for good. No data recovery tools on the market are available to un-delete files shredded by this powerful, yet simple tool. Let Privacy Controls sniff out your index.dat files and blast them away for good. When you have a tool like this that goes beyond merely clearing the cache, your privacy is protected.