in message
Much to my surprise nearly all so-called washer & cleaner tools can
wipe all
the index.dat files only on next reboot - if at all !
This is of cause ridiculous when someone steal the computer over
night.
He can then investigate the index.dat
Do you know such tools which are able to wipe the index.dat's at
shutdown?
NOTE: FollowUp-To header was ignored. Original list of newsgroups was
used for this reply.
--- Rant on inappropriate use of the FollowUp-To header ---
Don't use the FollowUp-To header. Posting to, say, 5 newsgroups but
moving replies to just 1 of them or to a completely different one
means you disconnect the visitors of those other 4 (or 5) newsgroups
from the rest of the discussion. If a newsgroup is appropriate for
your post then it is also appropriate for the replies. Or,
converserly, if the continued discussion of your post is not
appropriate in all the newsgroups to which you cross-posted then you
should not have posted to those other newsgroups in the first place.
You are using the FollowUp-To header to move replies to YOUR "home"
newsgroup but which the users of the other newsgroups may not visit.
After all, if you cross-post and include your "home" newsgroup then
you'll see all those replies in your home newsgroup and meanwhile all
the other users can still see the replies in their newsgroup where you
decided to also publish your post.
In
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/primer/part1/, it says, "For a
cross-post, you may want to set the Followup-To: header line to the
most suitable group for the rest of the discussion". Read another
way, that means you disconnect the discussion from all the visitors of
the other newsgroups to which you decided to publish your post. Why
did you publish to those other newsgroups if you are going to yank the
discussion away from those users and perhaps even from the respondents
you were attempting to elicit? It is exasperating to post a reply and
never see it in the newsgroup where you read the original post. If
your post was appropriate for all the groups to which you cross-posted
then why wouldn't those same groups be appropriate for the replies?
To yank away the discussion to your "home" group is rude since that is
probably not the "home" group for your respondents. You wanted
replies which may require further replies but now your respondents no
longer see the thread in the newsgroup that they visit to where you
published your post. Also, the respondents may not know if their
reply is appropriate in the "home" group that you happen to choose.
In general, malcontents and spammers use the FollowUp-To header to
hide negative replies to their flame or spam posts, often sending the
replies off to a *.test newsgroup.
There are some cases where FollowUp-To should be used. For example,
say a newsgroup is supposed to only get used for citing the content of
a spam e-mail. Discussions about that spam are not supposed to be
published in that citing newsgroup. Just the exhibits are published
there. If someone wants to discuss that particular spam, their
replies should go into a different newsgroup meant for those
discussions. I believe that is how some of the NANAE newsgroups
operate but the principle may apply elsewhere but it is rare few
newsgroups where FollowUp-To is appropriate. For the vast majority of
newsgroups, FollowUp-To is *not* appropriate. If you do not want
continue the discussion in the other newsgroups then don't cross-post
over there (and then use FollowUp-To to yank away the continued
discussion). If the discussion is not appropriate in those other
newsgroups then it seems you have nominated your post to be spam.
If you do use the FollowUp-To header, you are expected per netiquette
to alert the readers of your post that you used that header. Be
polite and add a note (at the start of your post) saying that you used
the header (ex., "WARNING: FollowUp-To was used and points to
<newsgroup>". You might also want to explain why any further
discussion in the other newsgroups is inappropriate despite your
rudeness in posting to those other newsgroups. Many times respondents
wonder where their reply post went because they expect to see it in
the group they visited and where they read your post. Not all NNTP
clients alert the user that the poster used the FollowUp-To header.
Think about it: you post to multiple newsgroups but yank the replies
to a different newsgroup than where your respondents visited, then you
need more help and reply to those replies but which are now only in
your "home" newsgroup, but the respondents won't see their posts nor
will they see your replies to them asking for more help. FollowUp-To
is not required when you cross-post since your "home" newsgroup should
be one those that were specified in the list of newsgroups. You'll
watch the discussion in your home newsgroup and the respondents or
lurkers can watch that same discussion in their own newsgroup. If you
don't want replies to show up in all the newsgroups to which you
cross-posted then don't cross-post over there in the first place!
When crossposting, there are not multiple copies of your post that
wastes bandwidth for each to get them propagated to other NNTP servers
and there aren't multiple copies of your post consuming disk space. A
single copy gets sent to the other NNTP servers and a single copy
resides on each NNTP server with pointers to it to make it show up in
multiple newsgroups. You aren't saving bandwidth or disk space by
redirecting replies for a cross-posted message to a single newsgroup.
You are just being rude to the visitors of the other newsgroups to
which you cross-posted but tried to yank away the discussion.
--- End of rant ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index.dat
Once opened, the file remains opened. It cannot be deleted until it
is no longer open, and that requires a reboot (actually it might work
to just logoff and back on).
If you want to see what is in the index files, find forensic utilities
that let you look inside, like Foundstone's Pasco
(
http://www.foundstone.com/us/resources/proddesc/pasco.htm). The
Index Dat Spy utility is more graphical and does a search to find all
index files.
So where have you been browsing that you don't want your parents to
know about? Why are you using your employer's property to visit sites
that can damage their image or incur legal problems? Why are you
doing porn on the school computer? No computer thief is going to give
a gnat's fart about where you have been browsing. Take a look at the
fields described in the index file at:
http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1827