Gray Watson Personal Thoughts 2002.11.07
Your Own "Big-Brother"

A friend recently asked me some questions about how to clear off all of the history and other sensitive information from his work computer. Thought I'd regurgitate my answers to him here because they are tools that we all should know about and utilize in this day and age of Orwellian privacy invasions in the name of homeland "security".

Your computer actually stores a number of pieces of information about your online habits without your knowledge. It downloads pages and images to a temporary directory so that they display faster, it records the input you type into Web pages so that it can help you enter it in again in the future, etc..

Here are some common things to look out for and solutions for the privacy conscious surfer.

• To clear your temporary (cache) web files:
  • In IE, go to the Tools menu, pull down to Internet Options, and select the General Tab. There is a clear history button which removes the web page list that you've been to, and a Delete Temporary Files button to remove the temporary pages and images stored on the harddisk. You can also reset your Home Page from this option window. I have mine set to Use Blank to come up with a blank page at first.
  • In Netscape, pull down the Edit menu to Preferences. Click on Advanced and then the Cache window. Then click on Clear Memory Cache and Clear Disk Cache. I'm not sure if the Clear Disk Cache actually removes the disk cached files.
• When you enter things into forms under IE (maybe other browsers) it shows you previously entered information which can often be private information. To get IE to stop this behavior, pull down the Tools menu -> Internet Options -> Content tab -> AutoComplete section, and uncheck the Forms button. You can also not have it autocomplete the web addresses or you can clear the forms history.
• I just looked around on the net for programs which efficiently remove all traces of personal information from your computer and found Window Washer. Cute name. Make sure that you read it's feature list because I'm not sure you want all of the cleaning. I'm sure there are others out there.
• If you want to keep bookmarks (favorite sites) but don't want to keep them in your browser on your computer, you can use the My Bookmarks service which gives you a remote account to maintain your links. I'm sure there are others providing this service.
• Make sure that your home page is set to something innocuous and not "Foot Fetishes Online". I set mine in both IE and Netscape to be a blank page. Netscape allows you to have a home page somewhere but have the start page be blank. Feature!
• Here's a couple pages to read and keep around about the subject.

  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,7318,00.asp
  http://www.firewallguide.com/privacy.htm
  

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