When you are looking at guarding your privacy on your computer, you will find that there are a number of things that you need to remember, and emptying out your temporary Internet files is one of them! Whenever you visit a page, Windows will keep track of it, and this means that anyone who knows where to look can simply hop in and figure out where you have been going. You may know how to empty your history, but do you know what temporary Internet files are and what you can do about them?
The first thing that you need to consider is what temporary Internet files really are. Essentially, every time that you visit a webpage, you will find that an entry is made in a directory of your computer system. This directory essentially caches the web pages that you visit, along with any multimedia content that you might have accessed, whether they are sound files or video files. This is not a bad thing, as most of us visit the same pages on a regular basis and the intent of this directory is to allow cached pages to load more easily.
You may be wondering what specifically is kept in the directory. The files that your computer downloaded to view the page are kept, including things like cascading style shets, JavaScript, html and images. This means that the content that changes will be re-downloaded to your computer, while content that is always there will be pulled from your cache system. As you might expect, this can be great when speed is all that you are looking for, but if you are interested in privacy, that is another matter. Despite the fact that they are referred to as temporary Internet files, these files do not go away unless you manually delete them by clearing out the cache.
Whether you are working on a home machine or a work machine, the process to get rid of the temporary Internet files is going to be the same. Start by getting out of Windows Explorer or any web browsers that you might have. Then go to Start, choose Control Panel and double click on the icon labeled Internet Options. Click on the General tab, and there you should see the directory called Temporary Internet Files. All you need to do is to click Delete Files in that directory, and then in the Delete Files dialog box, choose Delete all offline content. Then all you need to do is to click OK.
Getting rid of your temporary Internet files is essential when you want to maintain your privacy. If someone else uses your computer or you suspect that they do, this is a basic but essential security precaution that you need to undertake. It is easy, it is fast, and you will find that can help protect your privacy. Take some time to add it to your roster of privacy maintaining tasks, and it will make it much harder for anyone to see where you have been.