Total Privacy
Glossary of Terms

Have a question about what a particular term means? Find out more here.

Operating System: The operating system is usually the underlying software that enables you to interact with the computer. The operating system controls the computer storage, communications and task management functions.

Privacy: The interest that individuals have in sustaining a 'personal space', free from interference by other people and organizations.

Spyware: Spyware is software that covertly gathers your information and activity without your knowledge. It can record web sites visited, chat conversations and keystrokes, including passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive information. In fact any computer activity can be viewed by the offending Spyware.

Cookies: Cookies are text strings that are included with Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests and responses. Cookies are used to maintain state information as you navigate different pages on a web site or return to the web site later. Cookies can not be used to execute code (run programs) or deliver viruses to you computer.

Index.dat Files: Index.dat are files hidden on your computer that contain all of the Web sites that you have ever visited. Every URL, and every Web page is listed there. Not only that but all of the email that has been sent or received through Outlook or Outlook Express is also being logged. According to Microsoft, these files are used to cache visited Web sites to help speed up the loading of Web pages in Internet Explorer. Obviously this cannot be the case because when you clear the Temporary Internet Files the "index.dat" files remain behind and continue to grow. If you delete or clear the Temporary Internet Files, there is absolutely no need to index the URL cache because those files no longer exist.

Temporary Files: Files created by Windows and other programs during operation. These files and generally not harmful, but tend to take up a lot of space and can cause Windows to operate slower than usual.

Browser Cache: every web page you visit is saved in your cache, including images on those pages, to speed loading the next time you visit. These can use enormous space and anyone using your PC can then see the pages you have browsed.

Shredding: shredding is an additional security measure that overwrites the contents of specified files before deletion. This ensures that even if the underlying file system does not physically remove all traces of the file, that all contents are effectively inaccessible.

Location Bar/Typed URLs History: Internet Explorer (as well as other browsers) stores the URLs you typed to the system registry, so that you do need to type again next time. But others can see where you have been on the Internet.

AutoComplete Memory: The Internet Explorer AutoComplete feature suggests matches as you type text in any of the following areas:

• The Address toolbar in Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, or on the Windows desktop or taskbar
  
• The Open box in the Run dialog box accessed from the Start menu, or the Open dialog box accessed from the File menu in Internet Explorer
  
• Forms (including user names and passwords on forms) on Web pages

Start Menu Recent Documents: Recent Documents lists the last 15 document files that you have accessed, allowing any of these documents to be reopened simply by clicking on the name of the document.

Start Menu Find Files or Folders History: Windows and IE saves the files, text and computers you have ever searched, so when you want to search again, you do not need to type again, but others can also find what you have searched on your computer.

Windows Run History: Windows stores the programs you ran in the start menu run text box. so that you do not need to type if you want to run it again, but it will also let others have the choice to see what program you have run.

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