Index.dat file Evidence

What are index.dat files?

Index.dat files contain privacy threatening content.
Every website you ever visited remains in this file, even after you have removed all temporary internet files and history. Index.dat files are locked by the system and hence not possible to delete or modify.

Every time you visit a website, the contents (html files, pictures, flash-scripts - etc.) are downloaded to your computer and saved. This is called the cache or Temporary Internet Files.
Every time a cache entry is saved, it will also insert a pointer to the cache files in the index.dat file. Internet Explorer uses Index.dat files to keep track of offline data (the cache) like an index in the end of the book.

Internet Explorer uses three different types index.dat files:

1. Cache index.dat file
   Internet Explorer uses the cache for two reasons. The primary reason is for fast access to web pages. If the web page you visit hasn't changed since the last time you visited, Internet Explorer will load the website from the hard drive (the cache) instead of live from the www-web. To find the cached website on the hard drive, it searches in the index.dat file and the browser shows the local page . The cache* will also allow users to access homepages offline.
2. History index.dat files
   This is actually a collection of index.dat files. These are history indices, every time you visit a homepage, that address will be inserted into to history index.dat files. Each history index.dat file is associated with a date. In the browser, this is what the history shows.
3. Cookies index.dat file
   Every time a web site creates a cookie on your machine, IE will insert an entry in the cookies index.dat file that associates the homepage with the cookie file. Next time you visit that homepage, IE finds the cookie file through the index.dat file.
   

* Cache can be cleared through the IE control panel, but the references to the sites will still be stored in index.dat file.

The actual contents of te cache (images, html, etc) will still be stored on the hard drive and can be recovered with reasonably simple recovery software.

Why are index.dat files a privacy threat?

Index.dat files contain url's to every website you have visited since the installation of your Operating System. It also contains links to every picture and other Internet resource you have accessed. (including porn, contents of to sites you have accidentally visited, etc.)
Index.dat files are in plain text and can be read by anyone capable of opening a file in Notepad. But this is not enough, index.dat file can't be removed manually.

If you select the index.dat file (in case you can find it) in Explorer and press the delete button you will get an error message that it's being used. (locked file) In other words, on your hard drive, there are plain text files (binary coded) called index.dat, they contains links to every web resource you have ever visited and you are not able to erase this file.
It is obvious that no further explanation of why these files are a privacy threat is required?

How do I erase index.dat files?

Erasing the index.dat files is a complicated and time consuming task for regular pc users.
As mentioned earlier, the files are locked by the system and can not be erased. To remove them in Windows 95/98/ME you need MS-DOS skills. The idea is to create a boot disk, start the computer with the boot disk, and remove the files from the MS-DOS prompt.
In Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 not even restarting the computer in safe-mode lets you to delete them.

Evidence Eliminator Cleans index.dat files

One of Evidence Eliminator's great functions is that the index.dat file contents will be erased after a "safe restart" or "safe shutdown" command.
Simply let Evidence Eliminator take care of all the hard work to make your hard drive clean as new.

Of course this is just one of the many pc security features of Evidence Eliminator.