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Beware: Internet Temporary Files

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
For those who feel/believe that internet temporary files are not a hazard to your computer...I have this personal experience to show that they can be.

My brother-in-law's mom, Kaye...the lady who had to have a tumor removed from her heart today...has a nice laptop. It was not working right....she could fire it up, log onto to user account thingie and then the screen would go black. The same is true for the two user account thingies for her grandchildren. Kaye asked me to look at it. I brought it home and found that the system could not be turned off....so I removed the battery for a minute to two then plugged the laptop in using the external power cord. Got into safe mode and snooped around. I managed to get dump the temporary internet files....nearly 6000 files and a tad over 348megs....and restarted the laptop into normal mode. I was then able to log on to all three user accounts without the screen going black.

The system still had a few other problems that I was not able to fully resolve...one being the really cheesy anti-virus package that Road Runner provides...CA something or other....I had to do a full system restore to get rid of it.

So, I highly recommend the use of Ccleaner to safely and fully remove temporary internet files and cookies and other junk from you system. I run Ccleaner, set to do a 7 pass secure overwrite, every time I leave the internet, every time I shut down a program. Maybe 30 or 40 times a day, Ccleaner is run on my system.

OBIO
 
If you don't have something like CCleaner and you do things manually or with other programs, make sure you delete your flash cookies every once in a while. It is a way websites (mostly advertisers) get around your regular cookies and keep on maintaining sessions even after you delete your regular cookies.

You can easily remove them by using the flash settings panel here:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

Just another security thing that I'd bet 95% of users have never heard of before. The Ethical Hacking class I'm taking at college is sure opening my eyes to the virtual warzone out there. :icon_eek:
 
I'll second the CCleaner utility. When I first put it on the Wife's Win 7 set up, after using the new computer about 5 months and things were getting real slow, there were something over 12000 files and around 12.782 million gilliwatts worth of space being tied up. Sped things up considerably.

One caveat is to consider using the smart cookie feature though. I didn't the first time and 10 minutes later she was howling that she couldn't get to e-mail anymore and what did I do now?! Seems the feature will spare from death frequently needed cookies. I could have read the instructions but where's the adventure in that?
 
One fella I recommended Ccleaner to ran it, cleared his system of all the junk...and his wife was POd for a week because she could not get onto her e-mail and game sites because she could not remember her passwords...and Ccleaner had sent all the saved passwords to the netherworld. I then told him to tell her that saving any vital info on your computer is like taping you birth certificate, drivers license, social security card and pass port to the back glass of your car and parking it in a mall parking lot....someone will see the info and use it for nefarious means. If you have trouble remembering your passwords, write them down on a piece of paper and put it in the top drawer of you desk.....still not totally safe but a lot safer than having them stored on your computer....at least being in your desk would require someone to actually come into your house to access the info.

OBIO
 
norab said:
Already swear by CC Cleaner but the flash control was new to me, many thanks
Click to expand...

Same here, I like it too. People who have difficulty with it I have found merrily install it and run it without reading the manual nor checking which little checky boxes are actually checked or not.
I'm sure there will be a fancy Latin phrase describing this. lol
Nul caveat manualiorium.
 
I use Crap Cleaner also for quick removal. FTR OBIO, your bud could uncheck passwords from the email and others.

But you will not believe what stays in your computer even after running CC,. Lots of string item then in time will take up 20 gigs or more. I also sometimes remove all info from a HD and reinstall Windows. For this and to completely clean the HD, I use O & O SafeErase. It's payware, but for those of us that have to do these things on occasion, it's the best thing going.

A word of warning, do not buy and use SafeErase unless you positively know what you are doing, it can completely remove vital programs in you are not careful or unknowledgable about how to use the program.
 
Like Caz, I have developed the habit of cleaning my drives, formatting them, overwriting them, and reinstalling twice a year. It keeps the box cleaner and running better, and seems to make HD crashes less likely. I don't know if the second part is true or not, but since I began doing it..I have not had a HD crash due to problems with the Boot Sector or FAT file.

OBIO
 
This evening, I took the now clean and running very well laptop back to Kaye, my brother-in-law's mom, and took a look at their desktop system. As usual, the very first thing I did was to install Ccleaner and run it....and nearly fell out of my chair when the Analysis was completed. 11.85 GIG GIG GIG of crap files! I have never seen such a pile of crap files on a system before. 11.85 Giggety Giggety Goo! It took an hour and a half for Ccleaner to run a 7-pass secure removal on all those files. Once done, rebooted the system and it ran like new. A few tweaks here and there, installed Microsoft Security Essentials and ran it (found 4 trojan downloaders...the grandkids love bit torrents for music and movies).

OBIO
 
obio...i use mcafee..is it really that bad?...should i do the microsoft essentials ? instead?....i think i know what i mean.....when mcaffee runs on thursdays...it gets stuck at 53% and ive noticed its allways on megascenery california 080 i believe.......just sits there four hours and doesnt move
 
Daveroo

I am NOT an internet security specialist, I am NOT a guru of anti-virus packages, but in my personal experiences, I have found that the security packages your ISP gives you for free are not worth the time it takes to download them. When I had AOL...back before I learned just how nasty and invasive AOL truly is....I ran the McAffe security suite that came with AOL. And it did next to nothing in protecting my system. When I went to broadband with Road Runner, they had Stop Sign or some such...and it too was terrible. McAffe has shown itself, in my experiences working on other peoples' systems, to be worthless.

I used to use AVG, the free one, and was happy with it...until the AVG 2011 came out...and it was terrible. Resource hungry, far fewer updates, let more crap through. I dumped it and went with Microsoft Security Essentials...and the very first time I ran it, it found 8 nasties that AVG 2011 had let through.

Now...there is not such thing as a 100% effective, full-proof anti-virus package. And 90% of your internet security is between your own ears....knowing what sites to avoid, not going to places that are likely to harbor nasties...and if you rely solely on your anti-virus package to protect your system, you will get nailed.

Would I dump CrapAffee and go with Microsoft Security Essentials? In a heart beat! MSE has real time program and file monitoring...without using up too much system resouces, daily updates..or near daily at any rate. I have mine set to do a full system scan every day starting at noon. Coupled with CCleaner and Malwarbytes Ant-Malware and the stock Windows Firewall and the hardware firewalls in my router and modem, I feel that I have a pretty good security package...not the best in the world..but good enough that I have little fear of surfing the big bad internet.

OBIO
 
OBIO said:
Daveroo

I am NOT an internet security specialist, I am NOT a guru of anti-virus packages, but in my personal experiences, I have found that the security packages your ISP gives you for free are not worth the time it takes to download them. When I had AOL...back before I learned just how nasty and invasive AOL truly is....I ran the McAffe security suite that came with AOL. And it did next to nothing in protecting my system. When I went to broadband with Road Runner, they had Stop Sign or some such...and it too was terrible. McAffe has shown itself, in my experiences working on other peoples' systems, to be worthless.

I used to use AVG, the free one, and was happy with it...until the AVG 2011 came out...and it was terrible. Resource hungry, far fewer updates, let more crap through. I dumped it and went with Microsoft Security Essentials...and the very first time I ran it, it found 8 nasties that AVG 2011 had let through.

Now...there is not such thing as a 100% effective, full-proof anti-virus package. And 90% of your internet security is between your own ears....knowing what sites to avoid, not going to places that are likely to harbor nasties...and if you rely solely on your anti-virus package to protect your system, you will get nailed.

Would I dump CrapAffee and go with Microsoft Security Essentials? In a heart beat! MSE has real time program and file monitoring...without using up too much system resouces, daily updates..or near daily at any rate. I have mine set to do a full system scan every day starting at noon. Coupled with CCleaner and Malwarbytes Ant-Malware and the stock Windows Firewall and the hardware firewalls in my router and modem, I feel that I have a pretty good security package...not the best in the world..but good enough that I have little fear of surfing the big bad internet.

OBIO
Click to expand...

pk thanks..i have the stand alone (if you will) paid version of mcaffee but i dont like it..i use ccleaner all the time and after my dr appt going to do these other two...thanks
 
Re: McAfee

Daveroo said:
obio...i use mcafee..is it really that bad?...should i do the microsoft essentials ? instead?....i think i know what i mean.....when mcaffee runs on thursdays...it gets stuck at 53% and ive noticed its allways on megascenery california 080 i believe.......just sits there four hours and doesnt move
Click to expand...

McAfee was once a good app. Since the redesign to make it Vista capable it has turned into a very lousy A/V program.

It has also been recently proven that the Microsoft Security Essentials (freeware) is clearly better (than McAfee - payware) as it finds malware that was previously missed by McAfee.

Personally I prefer AVG (both the free & payware versions) I agree it provides many "false positives" but I think it's better to be safe than sorry.

PLEASE NOTE:
CCleaner does not "delete" temp. internet files (TIF's) & cookies ... it ERASES them. Nor should you just delete anything.

Simply deleting any file only tells the o/s to disregard the data & nothing else. The data remains intact until that area of the harddrive is written-over with new data. Deleting malware or TIF's only serves to turn any bug loose in your system as 99% of bugs enter your system thru TIF's
 
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