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One of the most popular pages on the PCIN.net site is the "What's
the Deal with the Temporary Internet Files directory"
article. This goes over some of the problems with the way Microsoft
saves Internet data (history, cookies, and cache).
People are interested in this because it deals with their privacy.
Even when you think that you've deleted your "tracks",
they are still there. A market has emerged for software utilities
that will help with this, and one of the best is PurgeIE
by Assistance &
Resources for Computing, Inc.
I downloaded the program, and it installed without problem. When
you install PurgeIE, you get 15 days of free trial. The 15 days
do not need to be contiguous (you can use it on 15 different days). During
the 15 days, all of the features of the program are available.
After the trial, you have to register it. I tried both a site
license and a standard registration code, and in either case,
registering the program was simple.
Before I started reviewing the program on my Windows 2000 Laptop
with IE 6 installed, I cleared the Cookies (set to accept all
cookies), History, and Temporary Internet Files folders (set to
use up to 10 MB) using the Internet Options of the Control Panel.
I also manually deleted the files in my Temp folder.
I then used Windows 2000's CMD.exe (a DOS-type environment) to
view the actual structure of the folders.
- The History folder still had a desktop.ini and a 144kb index.dat
- The Temporary Internet Files folder had one empty sub-folder,
and had a desktop.ini and a 592kb index.dat
- The Cookies folder had a 32kb index.dat
The last thing to do was to visit some web sites.
- Visited PurgeIE.com
to build up the cache.
- Visited PCIN.net (I'm positive
that there are no cookies on the main portion of the site
- Visited PCIN.net
FreeHelp Forums to create a cookie with contents that I
expect (username and password)
- Visited eBay
and logged in with my User ID
- Visited Microsoft.com
- Visited news.com.com
(knew there would be ads that would generate cookies)
I then closed IE and started Purge IE.
From this main screen, you can choose various options to purge.
You can select them all and then when you click the Purge button,
everything will be purged. You can also pick and choose what you'd
like to purge and then save the options to run again later.
Another way to customize it is to protect items. When you click
the Protect button, the screen changes to one where you can view
details of the cookies, cache, and visit history of Internet Explorer.
Based on the surfing that I explained above, I ended up with 6
cookies. eBay and the PCIN.net FreeHelp Forums were the only sites
that I logged into, so the others were unnecessary. And since
I don't log into eBay that often, I figured that the only one
I would protect was the PCIN.net cookies. It contains my username
and password and protecting it would save me from having to type
it in each time.
Clicking the Cache button shows you all of the items that are
in your Temporary Internet Files folder. The Visited button shows
you all of the sites that you have visited that are stored in
your History folder. I didn't see the need to protect any of the
items in either of these folders.
One interesting note about the Cache (Temporary Internet Files)
section... It shows all of the files that are stored in the folder,
as well as how many times they were loaded. From visiting various
sections of the PCIN.net site, I had loaded the PCIN logo 39 times.
The image is 5 kb in size, and after downloading it once, the
other 38 times it was loaded from the cache saved me downloading
an additional 190kb.
The only complaint I had about these sections is that you can't
sort a column by clicking on the column headers. You need to click
on the desired option in the Sort Columns sections. This is a
little unintuitive, but easy enough to get used to.
Returning to the main screen, I chose to purge everything except
for my single protected cookie. I clicked on the Purge button,
and it completed quite quickly. It shows you all of the files
that were deleted, and any error messages. The errors that I came
across were a Google.ca favicon.ico was locked, and the index.dat
file of one of the daily history folders locked. This was nothing
to be alarmed about. The PurgeIE
site clearly explains what the locked indicator means, and
suggests some programs which might be causing the locking.
After completing these tests, I closed PurgeIE (IE was already
closed) and proceeded to see the size of my folders as compared
to the initial sizes.
- The Cookies folder only had 1 PCIN.net cookie and the index.dat
file was 32kb
- The History folder was empty and the index.dat file was 144kb
- The Temporary Internet Files folder was empty and the index.dat
file was 592kb
In each instance the end result was the same as what I started
with. Obviously PurgeIE worked as expected. But it also appears
that when using the Internet Options applet of the Control Panel
with Windows 2000/IE6 works fine. If this is true, then it raises
the question, "Is a program like PurgeIE necessary?"
I say, "Yes!" for several reasons:
- Various combinations of Windows 98 and IE4/5 do not clear
the Temporary Internet Files and Cookies folder well.
- IE4/5 doesn't have the option to clear cookies
- Even in IE6, it is either all or nothing when it comes to
clearing cookies
- There is built in Cookie management in IE, but it is very
awkward.
- PurgeIE allows you to perform several functions all at once.
Doing it through the Internet Options applet takes several steps
- The ability to protect items is wonderful. After surfing for
30 minutes or so, you can end up with dozens of cookies. I only
have 5-10 sites that I log into regularly, so I can protect
those cookies, and purge the rest. I don't see a need to protect
Temporary Internet Files or History items, but I suppose others
might find this useful
- Purging can be done based on age. You may find that if an
item is older than a specified period of time, then you probably
don't need it. It might be useful to add a feature in the future
that allows you to purge anything that is under a specified
period of time. Let's say you just finished your 30-minute surfing
session. An option like that would allow you to purge everything
that was under 30 minutes old, in effect erasing that entire
surfing session.
Support Options
Learning about (and actually understanding) how Internet Explorer
controls your Internet settings is very complicated. Because of
this, you may not understand the program. If this is the case,
just take a look at the PurgeIE.com
web site. It contains dozens of pages that explain what the index.dat
file is, how IE manages cookies, what the Internet Security Zones
do, how to fix a corrupted cache, and more. Even if you aren't
interested in the product, there is a lot of valuable information
there.
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