Browsers forum: Poll: How often do you delete cookies, temporary Internet files, and browsing history?

NIS is a little bit of a cookie monster, and it gets rid of them all the time, even the ones I want to save, like Google search preferences. Malwarebytes and Super Antispyware don't get run but once or twice a week, and each of them does the same thing. I run CCCleaner also, more than once a day sometimes, if browsing gets slow, but I don't do it until I'm sure that there's no cache I want to browse. It amazes me how much trash CCCleaner gets rid of; I don't limit browser cache intentionally, so CCCleaner finds a gig and a half or more sometimes. Just an hour ago, it cleaned 984 mb of stuff, mostly browser stuff. I am not a patient person in some ways, and if browsing gets too slow, I get concerned that something is going on without my knowledge, so I'll run the cleaner, try other browsers, or even switch user accounts, just to see. If I'm concerned, I'll go to 2wire's speedtest site,


http://www.2wire.com/bandwidth/initialmeter.php, to see if my speed is okay. If I suspect any funny business at all, I immediately flip the wireless button on my laptop to "off." If I think I might have just hit a website with something malicious on it, I've been known to immediately hit the power off button (I know, I know, don't do that, but I don't care: I've got a selection of images to go back to if anything bad happens), since that's faster than turning the wireless off.

I agree that a clean install of Windows is the best solution IF the system is hacked or infected. I've seen people struggling for days trying to remove a virus, when a HD format and clean install would have taken half a day. Not sure how you do it in a couple of hours, just to load all the programs and documents would take a few hours, let's say if you have 30-40 GB of photos.

However, doing this on a regular basis is probably overkill.


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