I came home today, went into history, RUnning Windows XP, Dell PC, Dimensions.

Saw under history:

My Computer: then IE icon and Index
Held mouse over "Index" and this file showed up:

file:
///C : Documents and Settings/ Cheryl T******** (my name)/cookies/index.dat

When I clicked on this I got a security window saying:Your current security settings do not allow you to perform system commands on this item.

I went into explore and went to Documents and Settings, found index dat file 240 KB icon, under neath was the folder Attach, then under that was the folder Yahoo

Is someone in my house looking into my conversations? my email? my Yahoo IM' conversations?
PLEASE help and tell me what this might mean and how I can tell if i am being snooped on?

Thanks,
C.

index.dat is a series of files on all XP systems. There is no way to access .dat files from within Windows. Many people before you have found this troubling and software such as the following has been created to erase index.dat files:

http://support.it-mate.co.uk/?mode=P...index.datsuite

Index.dat is a permanent (undeletable within XP) history of temporary files (unless you use third party software to clear it out). But again without third party software these files cannot be viewed.

Hope this clears things up and helps.

Let us know if we can help further.