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| Anonymous |
 Posted: 28-11-2002 00:22 Post subject: |
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Do I trust Microsoft.......
To sell a piece of software that works?
No.
However, just think of a whole network of government and corporate agents trying to keep tabs on everyone using spyware wrotten by M$.
"A fatal exception error has occurred...
No wonder they missed 9/11... |
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| punychicken |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 00:45 Post subject: |
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| David Raven wrote: |
Hmmm!
I don't trust Micro$oft either...and what about their mates at Intel?
Remember back in 1999, when the pentium 3 chip came out? The early versions had a unique id number that a web server could read...enabling your machine to be associated with all-sorts of info. Like that from clickstreams and collaborative filters...
After a public expose, Intel 'disabled' the PSN(Processor Serial Number).
So, (excusing my computer ignorance), what's to stop this feature being re-activated?
And, are there any more 'features' like this yet to be found in the latest Pentium chips? |
That'll be Palladium then. And you can keep that too. According to a report on Theregister:
"TCPA and Palladium do not so much provide security for the user, but for the PC vendor, the software supplier, and the content industry. They do not add value for the user. Rather, they destroy it, by constraining what you can do with your PC - in order to enable application and service vendors to extract more money from you."
Buy a Mac or run Linux or become a Luddite I reckon. Run software by convicted criminals? yeah right. |
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ttaarraass Joined: 27 Oct 2002 Total posts: 1634 Location: Cambridge Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 01:39 Post subject: |
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IE users... did you know, regardless of how many times you clear your cache, IE stores everything you have ever looked at? If you're using Win98 or 95, you can check this out.* Go to Shut Down, Restart in MS-DOS mode, and type in:
cd c:\windows\tempor~1\
dir
You'll see an apparently empty directory listing. Now type:
cd content.ie5
dir
You'll see maybe two or three files. Nothing apparently to worry about. But then if you do:
dir /as/w
You'll see lots of other directories that you couldn't see before. Why? Because Microsoft sets these folders as "system" directories, meaning you can't see them normally. cd into one of the folders and do a dir and you'll see quite a bit of what is stored, although this is mostly recent stuff. However, the first time I learned about this, I had a good look around before deleting all the files - and found websites and Google searches that I'd last visited over a year before.
If you do the above while still in Windows, you should see a lot less files than when viewing it in "pure" DOS mode.
Basically, don't trust MS. I don't think there is a way to properly delete these files in Windows XP (I couldn't find a way when I was at a friend's house, who has XP, anyway)
But remember the old argument..... if you have nothing to hide then you shouldn't need to worry 
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* Disclaimer - I'm not responsible for anything you mess up because you don't know what you're doing in DOS. So there. |
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| gyrtrash Manflesh Joined: 27 Dec 2001 Total posts: 2093 Location: On the Quest for the Holy Ale Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 01:47 Post subject: |
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Seems like you're better off with an 'old' version of windows ('95 or '9 !
I've not used XP but it sounds like an 'iron cage of spyware'!
(Does this mean that in the future all conspiracy theorists will be using ancient p90's with win' '95?!)
(That was depressing reading Punychicken...) |
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| punychicken |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 02:41 Post subject: |
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| David Raven wrote: |
Seems like you're better off with an 'old' version of windows ('95 or '9!
I've not used XP but it sounds like an 'iron cage of spyware'!
(Does this mean that in the future all conspiracy theorists will be using ancient p90's with win' '95?!)
(That was depressing reading Punychicken...) |
Sorry! Not know for being an 'up' person
Taras: Has there been any justifiable purpose these hidden system files with the 'erased' data still in them? Are they accessable like a cache or just sitting there stagnating? |
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| ttaarraass Joined: 27 Oct 2002 Total posts: 1634 Location: Cambridge Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 02:52 Post subject: |
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| punychicken wrote: |
Taras: Has there been any justifiable purpose these hidden system files with the 'erased' data still in them? Are they accessable like a cache or just sitting there stagnating? |
Well I opened what seems to be the main file, index.dat, in the DOS text editor EDIT.COM (not a website! ). Inside it there was a fair bit of garbage in binary (smiley faces, paragraph symbols, empty boxes, random numbers and the like) mixed in between every single URL I had ever visited since somewhere around the time I installed IE5. This file was absolutely immense, as you can imagine. A lot of the other files were the same. There appears to be a limit on how much of the actual content is stored, but definetely every address you visit is stored, even if you do clear your cache and history.
Incidentally, I now regularly clear out this folder from DOS, and after using the internet for two weeks, it normally takes about two hours to delete all the files. This has considerably helped me since I used to keep getting messages saying drive C: was full... now I know part of the reason why
Most of this I found out from a website which described everything to do with this "mystery", but unfortunately I can't remember or find the URL now. |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 08:55 Post subject: |
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In Internet Explorer, Tools/Internet Options/General tab/Advanced, you can set the size of the cache your computer uses for saving Internet files.
I set mine to 50MB - I forget what the default level was, but it was much higher than that!
As Puny says, there's not much point clogging the hard drive with a load of garbage, and I can't see that it would be to MS's advantage either. |
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| stuneville Administrator
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 Total posts: 10190 Location: FTMB HQ Age: 46 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 09:08 Post subject: |
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| Default on mine was 300 mb or so! That's down to 100 now. |
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| ttaarraass Joined: 27 Oct 2002 Total posts: 1634 Location: Cambridge Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 13:36 Post subject: |
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| rynner wrote: |
In Internet Explorer, Tools/Internet Options/General tab/Advanced, you can set the size of the cache your computer uses for saving Internet files. |
Mine is always and has always been set to 65MB. Doesn't stop me getting 100s of MB of stuff stored...  |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 13:57 Post subject: |
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Windows stores info in the user.dat and swap (.swp) files as well as C:\WINDOWS\COOKIES\INDEX.DAT and C:\WINDOWS\APPLICATION DATA\MICROSOFT\INTERNET EXPLORER\USER.DATA\INDEX.DAT and many other files which have .hst, .log and .dat extensions. A good freeware program to find which URLs are stored on your computer is URL Finder. Good freeware cleaners are Internet Sweeper, Spider and XEN. To clean previously used space on your hard disk try NecroFile.
I use 'em all, and all free.
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| Anonymous |
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| ttaarraass Joined: 27 Oct 2002 Total posts: 1634 Location: Cambridge Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-11-2002 18:19 Post subject: |
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| Wastrel wrote: |
A good freeware program to find which URLs are stored on your computer is URL Finder |
What advantages does that have over Start -> Find -> Files containing text "http://"?  |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 29-11-2002 05:43 Post subject: |
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| It finds ftp sites and sites listed as begining 'www.' And sometimes (no idea how) it turns up sites Search doesn't list. |
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| JudgeNutmeg fart oo nice Joined: 26 Nov 2002 Total posts: 141 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 29-11-2002 14:50 Post subject: |
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| Recently bought my first pc with xp installed,it also has norton internet security.i found that the norton program retains a list of url's after deleting temp files from windows.They can be cleared from the Norton internet security screen(look in options,view event log)Not sure if this would explain things? |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 22-03-2003 15:47 Post subject: |
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I've only recently found this out, but its such a doozy I thought I'd share it with you.
Most anti-virus software will not sort out viruses in the content.ie5 folder mentioned earlier, because it is flagged as being system, hidden and archive.
You can boot into DOS mode and delete the content.ie5 folder if you attrib -r -h -s first.
The above applies to win98 - I'm too luddite to know about the other versions - or is it just that I don't waste money buying the same product over and over again |
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