index.dat

Recently, I noticed this file in my temporary internet files\content\IE5. Curious, I googled it and came across some suggestions that it might be a spyware tool because it supposedly records where you've been on the Internet, what pages you look at and for forth. Anybody have an idea if this is an OK file or is it in fact spyware?

Unless you have more than one of those residing in your TIF folder, this is ok. It's part of the Internet software (a system file), and hold info about what pages you've visited. It is in every one's TIF.

Here's a free utility that will delete index.dat files from your computer along with alot of other 'c**p' hence the name of the program.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Granted there are programs that will delete files in Index.dat, but are these programs that delete the Index.dat itself?

Not really much point in deleting the TIF index.dat, itself. It will only be created on the next boot.

I thought so Welshjim. I also thought that was what funkyuncle was asking, if he could just delete the Index.dat itself, and not the files it holds on to.

According to WinGuides it is possible although difficult to delete the index.dat file.
http://www.winguides.com/article.php/12/index.dat
If funckyuncle wants to go that route I can give him step by step instructions although I wouldn't recommend it. A good cleaning of that file every couple of days is all that's required to safeguard against any concerns of security as to what websites you visited and to recover some hard drive space.

An app called Spider.exe will clean up temps including index.dat.
http://www.fsm.nl/ward/
My brother had a prob with spider on XP but after sending him ccleaner, he's cool. I like spider myself.
One can always delete the index.dat files through dos but it takes a little maneuvering. Pretty easy though if you know the proper paths and dos filenames for each directory.
Yes, new index.dat files made on reboot but they are empty of any surf'n information.
Good luck.:cool: