Answer Line: Where Should I Delete Private Information?

I regularly empty the folders holding my cookies and temporary Internet files. What other folders should I clean out to protect my privacy?

Barbara Pecan, Clearwater, Florida

It's easy to cover your cybertracks via the Paranoia tab of Tweak UI 1.33, Microsoft's free Windows add-on. to download the program. (PowerToys for Windows XP's version of Tweak UI lacks this tab, but the tab in Tweak UI 1.33 works fine in XP. The two versions of Tweak UI can coexist on an XP-based system, as long as you don't try to use them at the same time.)

After you download Tweak UI 1.33, double-click it to extract the compressed files, right-click the tweakui.inf file (the icon for this file looks like a notepad with a cog wheel in front of it), and choose Install. Once you've installed Tweak UI, open Control Panel, double-click the Tweak UI icon, and click the Paranoia tab.

You'll find a number of options in the 'Covering your tracks' list. If you check any of these items and click OK, Windows will clear them each time you boot. Not all are worth selecting, however. Here are the key options to enable:

Document history: This is the list of recently opened documents you get by selecting Start, Documents (or in XP, Start, Recent Documents).

Internet Explorer history: This clears visited links and the drop-down list of recently visited URLs in IE's Address Bar toolbar. It does not reliably clear the browser's history list; to empty that, select IE's Tools, Internet Options, click the General tab, and select Clear History.

Run history: This option removes the list of commands that you typed in the Start, Run dialog box.