When running a virus scan I noticed that the scan spends a lot of time scanning the temporary internet files/contents (seemingly every internet action we have ever done. Hundreds, if not thousands of files). Can the contents file be emptied/deleted or are there important operating files enclosed?

The thousands of files to which you refer are Internet Explorer’s temporary internet files, also known as cache. These are copies of all the web pages which you have visited in a past period of time (depending on how long Internet Explorer is set to keep the pages before purging). Their only function is to speed up access to pages, so when you revisit a particular website, Internet Explore retrieves a copy from your hard drive, rather than having to go across the internet and fetch the page again. You can safely delete these files through Internet Explorer. In Internet Explorer, go to the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Internet Options’. In the window that appears, click the ‘General’ tab and under ‘Temporary Internet Files’ click ‘Delete Files…’.