Finds images I have never downloaded (solved)

[mrchirpy]

When I run a scan for "all" files, the thumbnail results show hundreds of images which I have not downloaded at any stage.

Some of them are images that I have viewed whilst browsing, but many of them are things that I know for a fact I have never seen before.

Where are they coming from?

(When I scan for just "images", the offending images don't show up on the scan )

 

[Augeas]

They are images embedded in webpages that a user of your pc has downloaded. Some sites, online newspapers for instance, are notorious for the amount of click-bait on the side. If you scan for images some pics won't be shown as they don't have a valid image extension.

[mrchirpy]

I'm the only person using this PC,and I know for a fact  that Recuva is finding things I have never even looked at on screen, and I certainly haven't downloaded them.

So Recuva is doing an excellent job of finding all these things, but where is it pulling them from in the first place?

 

[Augeas]

It is not really feasable that images would appear on your pc on their own volition. Otherwise nobody would be prosecuted for having anything the state considers to be moderately annoying on their pc. I probably have dozens of pics of footballers, fashion, irritating TV celebrities and what used to be called pop music, none of which is of the slightest interest to me.

I should add to post no 2 that software installs also download images, in some cases a great many, but these are more of a nuisance than a worry.

[mrchirpy]

OK, I think the 2 answers you have given me have shed some light on the matter, so I will consider it solved, and just keep an eye on things as I go along in the future.

 

Thanks for the help.

 

[mrchirpy]

Something else as a footnote, I think Recuva is finding things deleted from the Firefox cache. I thought when you cleared the cache it securely deleted everything, but apparently not, when I looked into it.

 

 

[nukecad]

Well isn't that the whole point of a recovery programme, to find things that you thought you had deleted but are still findable?

If everything got securely deleted as a matter of course then no recovery programme would be able to find anything.

[mrchirpy]

But the thing is nukecad, that Recuva was finding things that I had never downloaded, or even seen on the screen. I think now that it's something to do with the Firefox cache, which I clear out from time to time, but it looks like everything is recoverable when I do it,which is fair enough.. Recuva is brilliant for recovering things that I accidentally deleted, but it also throws up hundreds of other things that I never downloaded in the first place. It just looked strange when thousands of images came up that I'd never seen before.

Anyway, rightly or wrongly, I blame the Firefox cache.

 

[nukecad]

You are probably seeing 'prefetching' - loading of webpages (and so any images on that page) in the background.

Prefetching loads webpages before you visit them, by 'guessing' which links in the current page you might click on.
(Or even preloading all links an a page).
That way if/when you do click them they display faster because they have already been loaded.

Most modern browsers do it unless you turn it off, Firefox certainly does.

To turn it off in Firefox:
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/firefox/quick-tip-turn-off-prefetching-in-firefox/

[mrchirpy]

Thanks nukecad, I've followed your link and turned off the Firefox "pre-fetch", as per the article. It seems to have speeded things up somewhat, although isn't that what "pre-fetch" is supposed to do, i.e. speed things up?

Things are certainly quicker with it turned off, and now hopefully things won't be accumulating in the cache like they were before.

I have a good feeling about this.

 

Thanks again.

 

[nukecad]

Prefetch can speed thing up by loading linked pages in the background so that they display faster if you then follow that link.
It is supposed to happen when you are not doing anything (just reading the screen) so that it doesn't slow things down.

Turning it off does mean that if you do click a link it will take slightly longer to load, but who really cares with the speed of your computer these days?

Particularly if you have a slow broadband connection you may notice a difference with it turned off in general browser use.

It's also important to make sure it's off if you are on a metered connection, you don't want stuff you are never going to look at downloading in the background and using up you metered data allowance.

Hopefully it will stop any more of those unwanted images getting on your machine.
(You'll still see the old ones with recuva though, until they get overwritten and so no longer seen. To clean the old ones off so that recuva won't see them I think you'll probably have to wipe/overwrite the free space - after you have recovered what you need to).

[mrchirpy]

Ok, I've just tested things by looking at  only 2 maps on a map site, and when I scanned with Recuva it found 59 maps, so I think I know what's going on now, and what I'll be doing about it in the future.So my original problem wasn't actually a Recuva problem ( which does a sterling job ), it was my understanding of what was going on behind the scenes.

Thanks again for all the help.