In a PC running Windows 2000, where is web-surfing information stored other than the history and cookies files? If you clear history, delete cookies and delete files, are there other places where tracks are stored? If so, is there a convenient way to erase them without downloading “Discwasher” or something like that?
If you delete the history and cookies you are almost there. First, there is some info kept in Recent Documents. Then, other web applications (such as ICQ, GetRight, MSN Messenger, etc.) keep their own set of internet tracks. Also, if you log into an ftp server or another windows box through NetBIOS, there will be some tracks in Network Locations. I can’t think anything else right now.
A program like Steganos Safe can get rid of all of these tracks, but it is quite expensive.
you might try CrapCleaner available as freeware at http://www.ccleaner.com/
Isn’t there also a “typed URLs” file? I’ve seen a registry entry for that. When you begin to type a URL into the address bar, IE prompts you with URLs you visited previously that start with the same letters. I think it would be seperate from the “History” file, if I’m not mistaken.
I have a similar problem. Quite often I use “Yahoo” as a my search engine, that AFAIK also uses Google underneath, to look up things on the web. The words/phrase that I typed in the “search” box, seem to be stored somewhere, and whenever I try putting in something new to search, the box opens up a drop down list that has the words/phrases I used in previous searches. Anyone has any ideas how to prevent this from happening? I have tried the usual methods - cleaning out the history, recent pages, cookies etc etc. and that did not help much except that I do not get an autofill/dropdown when typing a URL.
testride – You may know this, but I’ll point out that server logs on another computer upstream will still keep records of what sites you-- I mean, the hypothetical surfer – has visited. If there are no criminal matters, a dial-up or broadband ISP won’t bother to look at them or even care, but someone using a work or education computer to access sites forbidden by institution policy could well be nailed by the logs. And there’s nothing the surfer can do to clear them – they’re on a seperate computer that only the system operator can access.
Quercus, thanks for the heads up. Actually, I knew about the admin logs, and I recognize that there is really no true anonymity in the internet world if someone really wants to track something. I was really thinking along the lines of nosy coworkers, shared public terminals etc. But reminders about things like that are always helpful.
Now nobody will know you’ve been looking at porno.