Hello, I am new here and not a technical advanced computer user
Shortly I decided it was a good idea to clean up my computer and, based on praising reviews, I selected CCleaner for the job. For the first run I unchecked the Cookie tab to preserve my login information. However, after this first cleaning run I discovered that besides of my Google preferences also al my login info was gone. Searching for answers and a solution I found this forum and a lot of postings related to this Cookie problem, but not a clear answer on how to avoid it. Please excuse me if I have overlooked something.
Based on what I red I decided to do a simple test and maybe some of you like to know the results.
1st Test. Unchecked Cookies and Index Tab (all others on default)
Found no *.sol files and therefore kept the Adobe Flash Player checked. Kept also the < IE ? Preserve Favorite Websites Data > checked
Ran CCleaner and Rebooted.
Result: Google preferences and the reference test site login info Preserved.
2nd Test Unchecked Cookies but Index Tab now checked (all others as above)
Result: Google preferences and login info gone.
Questions.
1 - Is this all you have to do, Uncheck the Cookies AND Index tab?
2 - Will this also work if using the Cookies to Keep under the Options Section?
The reason test #2 failed is because the Index.Dat was checked. When deleting index.dat file(s) you remove the references to the cookies. You can either stick with the method for test #1 or goto... Options, Cookies and move cookies from the delete column to the keep column. But even this method will require that you uncheck index.dat
The reason test #2 failed is because the Index.Dat was checked. When deleting index.dat file(s) you remove the references to the cookies. You can either stick with the method for test #1 or goto... Options, Cookies and move cookies from the delete column to the keep column. But even this method will require that you uncheck index.dat
Hey, guys. Thanks for this helpful thread. I love CCleaner - it keeps my old dinosaur running faster, and I've never had a problem with it deleting anything that changed my computer's operation. I just leave it on default settings.
I assume CCleaner defaults to remove Index.dat info because it protects us from something bad to leave the info in there. What is it protecting us from?
Are you saying I have to either:
1) uncheck Index.dat and keep all info in there, or
2) check it and delete all the info in there?
I'd like to keep the "remember me" info on just one or 2 websites I visit regularly. How can I do that?
I assume CCleaner defaults to remove Index.dat info because it protects us from something bad to leave the info in there. What is it protecting us from?
It protects you from the wife seeing what porn sites you visited ! !
Mostly it is to protect your privacy from :-
1. Web-sites which you may visit, and which may be able to inspect cookies to see what you bought elsewhere etc.
2. others who have access to your computer.
Malware can hide anywhere, depending upon how you define malware.
Some cookie cleaners will spend over an hour examining all partitions on all drives in a computer as they inspect perhaps 100,000 objects (I only have 50,000 files) and select for quarantine only those which hold malware (which they define as privacy breaches where one web-site can read the cookies created by another.)
CCleaner merely searches the standard locations where browsers commonly plant/read cookies, and regardless of what the cookie holds ( time of last vist, password, credit card no. ) that cookie will go if the relevant box is checked, or remain if you moved it to "cookies to keep" - and it takes very much much less than an hour to do so.