14 DAY TRIAL // Cleaning browser data is not a tough job, but when you work with multiple browsers you kind of wish you could achieve this for all of them in one sweep. Browser Cleaner to the rescue, but don’t let its name deceive you because this app can do plenty more than just wiping your browsing traces.
Browser Cleaner is a small, lightweight application designed as a quick way to eliminate the data collected while navigating the web in the most popular browsers of the moment. However, its abilities extend further as the application can be used to purge redundant content from Windows folders prone to gathering temporary data or unnecessary files.
More than this, its usage encompasses the possibility to sanitize free space on your disk(s) so that recovery of any deleted files is impossible.
The application is free of charge and also comes in portable form, which absolves you from installing on the system. But if you go with the desktop edition you won’t put too much effort into the installation process.
It comes with a plain, straightforward interface, which lets you view all main sections available. Browser Cleaner supports all popular web navigators and some other programs as well. Browsers you can use the app on include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Safari, Avant and the now discontinued Flock.
You can choose the type of data you want to be eliminated for each of these. Browser Cleaner can deal with cookies, cache data, history, list of typed URLs, downloads history and even stored passwords or auto-fill information. In the case of Google Chrome sessions can also be sent into oblivion.
Other Internet-related applications this cleaner can deal with are instant messengers and file sharing software. Both lists are pretty exhaustive as they include popular entries as well as a huge set of less used applications. Camfrog Video Chat, Google Talk, ICQ, Miranda, NetMeeting, Pidgin, Yahoo! or Paltalk are the chat apps you can use Browser Cleaner on, while the list of file sharing programs shows Azureus, BitComet and uTorrent besides ancient and in some cases discontinued file swapping tools.
Our tests did not include all applications currently supported by Browser Cleaner and focused on the most popular ones instead. With web browsers the cleaning session went pretty well, but not all of them benefited from the best scrub possible.
In the case of Opera we noticed that the app had not disposed of all the cache files, while in Google Chrome some cookies were left behind.
Still on the downside, the moment we started the cleaning operation the app always issued an error urging us to close a browser or more, even if the process would not target them at all. This also happened when we tested the app’s cleaning abilities with Windows items and nothing else would be selected.
On the bright side, if the browser on the error list is not the target of the cleaning, the task would be carried out and you would receive the “Successfully Cleaned” message upon completion.
The list of Windows locations you can purge with this cleaner is also extensive as it comprises paths where temporary data is stored, but can also affect prefetch files (which isn’t a bright idea), Windows Explorer thumbnail caches, logs, Run history, recently opened documents list or files accessed through open/save dialogs.
In the case of Windows items Browser Cleaner was quite thorough and purged the selected locations with diligence. However, it still asked us to close some web browsers upon initiating the cleaning procedure.
As far as cleaning data generated by other apps goes, the cleaner does not bring too long a list to the table; but it does include popular programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Flash player, Acrobat Reader, Nero, Avira Antivirus, avast!, AVG, Jasc Animation Pro, Microsoft Office suite, SnagIt, PowerArchiver, VirtualDub or WinRAR.
Another endeavor Browser Cleaner can engage in is sanitizing the free space on your drives. Valid files will be left untouched, while the rest of the space receives proper scrubbing with one of the three algorithms at your disposal: Pseudorandom (1 pass), RCMP (3 passes) or US DoD 5220.022-M (3 passes).
If deleted data has a chance to be recovered when the wipe features only one pass, in the case of the other two algorithms we were not able to retrieve the information as it had been too corrupted. The only hint at what the files would contain was their filename.
All major browsers are supported and even some with less market share. You can use it to remove traces left behind by other applications as well. During our tests we noticed some cookies left behind in Google Chrome and Opera’s cache folder was not thoroughly cleaned.
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