How to Delete Index.dat Files
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Mil Incorporated November 14, 2006
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Mil Incorporated |
Company profile: Mil Incorporated was founded with an
ambitious objective to be a trusted software partner for individuals
and enterprises around the world. Mil Incorporated provides software
security and privacy solutions that incorporate state of the art
technology, security expertise, and substantial resources. Web address: http://www.milincorporated.com/
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Mil Incorporated
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What are Index.dat files? Index.dat files are used by
Internet Explorer and Windows to store history, Internet cache,
cookies, UserData records and other information about what you have
done in Internet or in your PC. Although some of their functions are
useful, they are dangerous privacy threat - any person with even little
knowledge about index.dat files locations and structure can see history
of almost all of your computer activities. Index.dat files are not the
only privacy threat but they are the most obscure and dangerous one
because they are hard to find and even harder to delete. In fact, in
most cases it is impossible to delete Index.dat files manually because
Internet Explorer and Windows use them all the time.
Where are Index.dat files located ? Location
of index.dat files depends on the version of Windows and whether or not
you are using user profiles. Regardless of Windows version in many
cases you can't see or find index.dat file using Windows Explorer.
There is a little file called desktop.ini in each directory where
index.dat file is located. This desktop.ini file forces Windows
Explorer to hide index.dat files and to show the contents of Internet
cache or history instead. However you can use some other file utility
and binary (hex) editor to find the files and read their content. If
you have Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows 95 then
index.dat files are in these locations: C:\Windows\Cookies\index.dat C:\Windows\History\index.dat C:\Windows\History\MSHistXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\index.dat (XXXX are some digits) C:\Windows\History\History.IE5\index.dat
If
you have Windows XP or Windows 2000 then index.dat files are in these
locations (note that on your PC they can be on other drive instead of
drive C): C:\Documents and Settings\\Cookies\index.dat C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\index.dat C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\History\History.IE5 \MSHistXXXXXXXXXXX\index.dat What is in Index.dat files? As
already mentioned, index.dat files are binary files. Their content can
be seen only with binary (hex) editor. We will examine an index.dat
file from the Internet cache(Temporary Internet Files). Actually the
index.dat header is much larger but this is the most important part of
it. The first thing is the version of the index.dat file (Client
UrlCache MMF Ver 4.7) - this particular file is from Internet Explorer
version 4 but the index.dat file format is very similar in Internet
Explorer 5.x and 6.
How to erase or clean Index.dat files? Erasing
or cleaning of the index.dat files is not an easy task because they are
opened by Internet Explorer and Windows all the time. If you are using
Windows Me, Windows 98 or Windows 95 you can restart in DOS mode and
then you can delete index.dat files one by one (look in the folders
that are mentioned above). However if you are using Windows XP, Windows
2000 or Windows NT this won't work. Mil Shield is a powerful privacy
protection program that was designed specifically to clean and shred
the index.dat files content. Unlike the other methods of dealing with
index.dat file content, shredding is the best because it doesn't
destroy the entire structure of the index.dat file which can cause
Internet Explorer or Windows to crash but instead cleans and shreds
only the privacy threatening URL, LEAK and REDR records. Additional
benefit is the ability to preserve the tracks from some chosen by you
sites (selective cleaning), which makes your browsing more comfortable
and safe (it is rather suspicious to always have empty history, cookies
and cache - it is better to leave some tracks from "innocent" sites).
Mil Shield also cleans all other tracks as cookies, history, cache,
AutoComplete records, UserData records, history of recently used
folders and documents and many other.
More information about the article: http://www.milincorporated.com/a_indexdat.html
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