Using Windows 7. I don’t use Internet Explorer, the feature is turned off. I use Firefox as my everyday browser, sometimes Chrome and Opera.

When I run CCleaner it tells me, in the cleanup report, that it cleaned up some IE files: temporary files (I assume that means the cache), cookies, and index files. So my question is under what circumstances are these files created?

This has not been an easy question to find an answer to via web searching. I hope someone on here can shed some light in this.

Coincidently I use Opera 90% of the time. I went to IE one day and looked in History. There was my Opera browsing history. Only thing I can think of is that IE shares some data with other browsers. Maybe MS thought it might be a useful 'feature'

I use CC Cleaner too....

It also calls home, as does windows explorer.

We're at the point now where it really isn't possible to support Windows users anymore.

If you're okay with government surveillance of your activities, then that's fine, please do continue using Windows or Mac. But if you're not, realize that it really isn't a productive use of everyone else's time to try to make secure something that is insecure by design.

Please consider running Linux. From what I can see, the vast majority of expats can easily make this transition. You'll save money, you'll enjoy what feels like a hardware upgrade, you'll become a lot more knowledgeable about software and computers in general, but more importantly, you'll save everybody else a lot of aggravation.