|
Safety First As more very straight and upright citizens are finding our pages (and loving it), they need to know about what and where their computers are storing the pictures or details about where they have been on the Internet and what they were looking at. All info that we come across or you readers can send us, we will put here. It shouldn't take long to have sound advice and good choice about programs to use and some feed back about securing our computers from unwanted eyes. Even single guys, without innocent family members who use the same computer, can be embarassed if the staff at the repair shop should cum across their private files. Everything that you see while surfing the 'Net... your computer stores in files called cache files. The purpose of these stored files are to make it faster for you to access websites that you have previously visited. In these cache files are all the graphics and text that you saw or read while you were on the Internet. Also lists of 'where' on the Internet you went are kept. This information is kept until either it begins to overwrite itself as the memory fills up or you perform an action that is commonly referred to as flushing your cache. Which means you delete these files by calling on a command found in the browser. With MS Explorer Browser click the View menu and choose Internet Options. What shows up is where you can do the basic houseclean. Delete the temporary files and clear all history. You can do that after every Internet session. With Netscape its under the Edit menu and you choose Preferences. There you can clear away your History and Location bar files. To clear the cache you go to Advanced (same place under preferences) and clear the cache there. May be variations of this on different versions. Now this doesn't mean some 13 year old hacker can't find traces of your secrets but at least the average spouse won't accidently stumble across any naughty pictures. Of course this is very basic security and should not be considered really safe. The next security step is to get a program that clears up the files for you. One source of these type of programs is from shareware websites such as Nonags - or Dogpile Go to this website and see if this program Eraser is of any help to you. This fellow has written a program that deletes deleted files and more. If you have anything to add please send to: http://www.wankers.com/contact.htm Use your back button to return |