To get a sense for what kind of information you might find in an index.dat file, download the free Index Dat Spy application. Someone discovering which photos you edited or which Word doc you recently viewed may not have any impact on your privacy (the Excel spreadsheet where you keep investment data might be a different story) If more than one person signs on to any one computer, there are index.dat files corresponding to each person’s login information. The other types of index.dat files are likely more innocuous. History index.dat files leave behind a bread crumb trail of the sites you visit with new information incrementally stored over time. Most cookie information from the cookie index.dat file is removed when you clear your cookies, but there seem to be a few strays that remain. As I mentioned previously, deleting temporary Internet files doesn’t get rid of the temporary files referenced in the corresponding index.dat. Internet Explorer stores three main types of index.dat files: temporary Internet files, cookies and browser history files. With all this personal data just a few clicks away, finding effective ways to keep it private becomes important. Firefox stores plenty of data offline, but does do a better job of limiting access to that information. Those of you who are Firefox fans aren’t in the clear either. Internet Explorer retains the information to keep your browsing experience more convenient, but depending on how your computer gets used, it may compromise your privacy. This is one of those many areas where convenience and privacy are at odds. The information in index.dat files isn’t necessarily removed when you clear your cache or remove temporary Internet files. You may discover links to sites you don’t even remember visiting in these files. This personal information is in the clear available to anyone who sits at your computer (or at a public computer if you logon to a shared machine). Some index.dat files are associated with other parts of the operating system, like My Recent Documents and apps like Adobe Photoshop Elements and the Microsoft Office Suite which keep a record of recently opened files. Internet Explorer uses index.dat files to store this information, which when viewed in the appropriate text viewer, reveals a great deal about where you’ve been on the Web, including personal information like credit card details and passwords in some cases.
I noticed a couple of the articles on your site mentioned index.dat, what is that?Īll Windows browsers use hidden files to cache information about the pages you visit.