Cache Mystery

[Big_John]

has this ever happened to anyone before? i'm 100% sure no one else has been using this computer, and just now i found some stuff in my web cache that i have never seen before. it's just tons and tons of pictures from flickr. it seems to be all car/racing related like these:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3002/...0f670e1268.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3019/...9ee2d818fe.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3148/...9c9b7a0803.jpg


i don't even have flickr in my url history... where did these come from???

[R'as al Ghul]

where did these come from???

There's a secret agent that uses your computer for observations.

Seriously, if someone had cleaned the url cache and the history but not the browser cache, this could be the result. Check the time stamp for clues?

R'as

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Don't worry about it - Mozilla based browsers have the capability to prefetch data accessed through links to on certain web pages and store them in the cache for faster browsing. This only happens if the connection is inactive at the time, removing any performance negatives.

This is exploited by a command on a website. Google, among a few others, use the feature to load their search results faster when they are clicked on. I think Google Images use the feature also, but I'm not sure.

The Firefox Extension "FasterFox" also uses the prefetching mechanism to load pages the user may visit in the future before they actually go to them.

You can disable link pre-fetching if you want through the hidden advanced preferences option. This is a good idea if you are browsing using a Mozilla based browser at work - although pre-fetched sites don't appear in your history, they do appear on company firewall records.

Type "about:config" into the Location Bar. Ignore any warnings which appear. You should see a load of weird registry entry like commands. Search for "prefetch".

Double click on the entry "network.prefetch-next" which appears. The value should then change to false, disabling prefetching.

You can find more details on link pre-fetching here.

Hope this is useful

[Big_John]

hmm. could be prefetching i guess.. but this is the first time i've noticed something like this. i mean there are hundreds of pictures. i don't exactly check my cache very often though.. but i'm going to do so more often now. i'm leaving the prefetching on to see if this reoccurs.