“index.dat” – Are your personal details safe?
There has been a lot of controversy in the use of Internet Explorer (IE) Browser. Microsoft apparently uses a database file named as index.dat to maintain the history of the users of IE Browser in Vista OS. The ‘index.dat’, where .dat represents database, saves the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) which is used to view websites, searches made or any other files that have been opened. However, controversy lies in the fact that index.dat can’t be deleted or resized. Hence personal details get stored in index.dat and the security of it is questionable.
So, how will one view index.dat file? Since index.dat files consist of multiple files in multiple locations it is difficult to identify all of them. Some of the folders where index.dat is stored are in
\WINDOWS\Cookies\
\WINDOWS\History\
\WINDOWS\Temporary Internet Files\
The location of the index.dat does not help, because opening them is still a headache. The only option for opening an index.dat in Windows Vista is to use the various index.dat readers for Vista that are available online. There are many types of software that are especially made to view index.dat files, some of them are free, and others require a fair fee. Either way, it is essential to delete the index.dat on a constant basis and also to recheck by viewing it, to make sure any sensitive matter does not remain.