Browsing the internet leaves tracks on your computer: pages are stored in the internet cache, typed addresses are displayed in the address bar, cookies stored show which sites you've been to. And with Internet Explorer, even if you delete your cache, web history and cookies, a record remains in Windows index.dat files which anybody with basic computer skills can read.

You might think that only the very paranoid, or those with guilty internet secrets might want to clean up their internet tracks, but snooping spyware can look for your tracks, so leaving them behind risks exposing personal information over the internet, as well as to anybody using a computer after you.

What is index.dat? filext.com
Deleting index.dat  acesoft.net
What is index.dat? winguides.com

There are a lot of utilities written to clean up internet tracks. (The second and third links above are for clean-up utilities which will delete index.dat files - for $19.95 or $29.95.) Here are three more, which, in keeping with the rest of the site, are free (although the author of cleaner asks for donations- please donate if you can.)

IE Privacy Keeper will delete all internet tracks, including index.dat files and cookies (both the cookies themselves and cookie pointers, which some cookie utilities and cleaning programs leave behind.) You can add the cookies you want to keep to an edible cookies list, so you don't delete useful cookies such as the ones that contain log-on information. You can configure it to perform a range of cleaning actions. It will work with Firefox as well as IE, and you can set it to clean up your tracks when you close your browser.

IE Privacy Keeper

System Wiper will delete all internet tracks, including index.dat files and cookies (both the cookies themselves and cookie pointers, which some cookie utilities and cleaning programs leave behind.) You can add the cookies you want to keep to an edible cookies list, so you don't delete useful cookies such as the ones that contain log-on information. You can configure it to perform a range of cleaning actions. It will work with Netscape as well as IE, and you can set it to clean up your tracks when you close your browser.

iI Software's System Wiper

CCleaner also deletes all internet tracks, including index.dat files and cookies (both the cookies themselves and cookie pointers, which some cookie utilities and cleaning programs leave behind.) It also has an edible cookies list (IE only.) It can automatically clean your computer on boot. Like System Wiper, it will delete Windows temporary files, but it also roots out old memory dump, chkdsk and log files for deletion, and has a separate registry checker to remove redundant entries from the registry.

CCleaner