Clearing out Temporary Internet Junk once and for all.

 From the Desktop of 
J. Warren Richardson

 

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I received a help message from a friend who had upgraded to MS Internet Explorer version 8. It has changed in subtle ways such that my friend could not easily delete the cookies and forms that he had learned to remove per my instructions a number of years ago, as before. Below are two illustrations that point the way for easier deletion of ones pesky cookies, forms, and other intrusive items saved to ones own computer. Some objects are dinosaur items, from when computing on the Net was done only on dial-up snail slow modems; they would use graphics over and over again, stored on your PC, as one drilled down into a web provider's pages and saved the time it took to refresh these pages, a lot.

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Some of the stuff saved in your PCs Temporary Internet Folder (and other folders created by the websites you visit) are modern inventions that all but count your key strokes to keep track of what you do on the Internet. The worst of these are Forms, Passwords and some cookies, closely followed by "InPrivate Filtering Data." If your Internet service is fast (ours is faster than our network card can keep up with making the page refresh rate almost instant) you don't need to save any of this rubbish, in my humble opinion, once your Internet Session is DONE. In addition, since every session means you'll be picking up additional objects, after a while your PC will be slower and slower due to Explorer having to sort through all the junk to find the latest items it needs each time you change web pages.

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The Temporary Internet Folder used to be under the "Tools" legend in MS Internet Explorer 7 and earlier. Now to get rid of these items, once your session is about to close you'll find the feature you want under "Safety" on the Tool Bar. For example, after closing out of my Yahoo! email account I do and recommend that you do the following. Click the "Safety" legend and a drop down menu will open. Click "Delete Browsing History."

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Now a new pop up window opens. You'll notice that mine has all of the lower check boxes checked. I don't want ANYTHING being left in my Temporary Internet Folder or forms folders or other intrusive third party folders that are created without my knowledge. That's based on years of experience in getting weird widgets and outright hacks to go away.

Bottom Lines - If you have a fast Internet Connection and if your web browser won't work effortlessly without having all the above boxes checked after your sessions are over and you hit the Delete Radio Button after the last session - change your Internet Service Provider because the term "Temporary" is not understood by their programmers or they have a hidden agenda buried in their "terms of service" which affects their financial bottom line. It is no accident when you find 50 spam emails after shopping for a fishing rod for your kid - offering everything from discount fishing poles to rocket assisted sling boosters for the longest casts on record. They* watch your Internet Usage like hawks my friend. Delete that junk. Period.

*"They" are, Legislators, Domain Providers, Hackers, Entertainment sites, game sites, social networks, email services, list makers, criminals, perverts, traders, sellers, buyers, charities, churches, sex sites, fund raisers, scam artists, match makers, silly eGram sites, newspapers, eMagazines, special interest groups, all Blog sites, all "Free" sites and services, sports sites, and just about any other topic one could think of on the fly. The primary source of revenue being sold on the Internet are lists of special interests by web page use trackers to commercial interests that want to target their markets. Every commercial website has the means to gather your choices on the Net and send them back to their list mining servers. The amount of money per thousand names is pennies but at last count the number of names listed daily is billions. It's all automated. Deleting your sessions is your only legal defence; if you were to actually read and understand the Terms of Service Agreement you checked as having read when you use new Internet Services you'll find that is your ONLY option, except not using the Internet at all.