know your caches
securitydata_securitycaches

It is somehow alerting how much information can be found in a cache folder. I will try to create a list of all caches I could find. This document stays work in progress, of cause.

But consider how important this is. The caches may contain personal data, such as:

  • email addresses from your mail program
  • telephone numbers if you synchronize contacts with your mobile phone
  • photos either from your phone, skype, facebook and where ever they were shown
  • which music you have on your computer, because media players automatically download cover arts and store them on your disk (also the download could be tracked, of cause)
  • passwords, because some applications even cache passwords :/
  • all your personal photos and every movie you have got on your disk, because many image viewers and filemanagers will create thumbnails for them.
  • visited websites can be found in your browser caches.

Browser Caches

$HOME/.cache/chromium/
$HOME/.cache/mozilla/
$HOME/.cache/midori/

Remote desktop caches

$HOME/.rdesktop/cache/pstcache_2_2

IMs

$HOME/.Skype/
$HOME/.purple/[logs,icons]

thumbnails

these locations seem to be compatible (having subfolders fail, large and normal)
$HOME/.thumbnails/
$HOME/.local/share/thumbnails

Make caches be a temporary place

This will slow down your computer in some cases, but it is probably worth it.

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