Temporary internet files are the cache of the internet explorer. It is like a directory on Microsoft Windows system. This directory is used by the internet explorer as cache pages and other multimedia content like audio and video files, from websites visited by the user. Web pages including html, images, cascading style scripts and javascript scripts, gets stored. This means hat when a web page is loaded with the internet explorer, it gets saved on the hard disk of the computer as cache. Thus, if the user decides to open the same page again later, it opens a lot faster. Thus temporary files make enhances the speed of web browsing. The saved pages can be opened from the cache even when the user is offline. Thus it provides the facility to work offline. The files are often useful to police to collect forensic evidence.
There is a serious problem with the temporary internet files. These files hamper the privacy of a user. Everyone having access to a particular computer can look into the Temporary Internet Files folder created by a particular user, thus, a third person can check out the sites visited by a particular user. The files can be manually deleted using the internet explorer interface. But manual deletion of the files and folders does not completely erase the traces of the pages . A special file called Index.dat is placed in the folders and it preserves the names as well as the dates of the first visits to many pages. Deletion of cache files using internet explorer is subject to deletion privacy issues. Many other alternative tools are also available to erase the data instead.
Mil Shield, is such kind of a tool. It is a powerful privacy protection program that was designed particularly to deal with the cleaning of temporary files. It can be used to selectively clean all traces of browsing of particular pages while keeping the other important pages intact.
The location of a temporary internet file depends on the version of windows being used and on whether or not a user is using user profiles.