It seems on this forum....

[icdlr]

that a lot know a good bit about clearing tracks of activity on computers/internet.

How do you clear your tracks of porn and anything else without evidence eliminator or paying stuff like that.

I don't use IE I use Opera and Netscape and I once d/l from Gnutella/Limewire.

 

[ElusiveOneMd]

Been in the computer business all my adult life. Not sure what anyone else uses. But I got a freeware version of software called WindowWasher a year or so back. It works perfectly well.

If you are just trying to cover your tracks from a significant other or something, that is fine.

If you really have something to hide... too many tracks OUTSIDE of your computer.

The internet is like "Big Brother". If someone wants to know bad enough, they can find out.

 

[icdlr]

Not the FBI or anything.

Just this real REAL technical guy who will be using this comp. and is very nosy.

He would know how to retrieve stuff.

 

[Maiden-hunter]

I use a program called tracks eraser cleans all the hisroty and cookies out but can save sites if you dont want the bother of having to log on every time

 

[DuckLover]

Not the FBI or anything.

Just this real REAL technical guy who will be using this comp. and is very nosy.

He would know how to retrieve stuff.

Remember to erase the eraser program itself! If the tech guy finds it, he'll figure that you had something to hid--probably porn-- and will be even MORE likely to dig for it.

 

[Weird Harold]

Not the FBI or anything.

Just this real REAL technical guy who will be using this comp. and is very nosy.

He would know how to retrieve stuff.

Byond deleting your temporary internet files, deleting your history, erasing your favorite, removing any files you've downloaded, and defragging your disk, there's not much you can do without getting a program designed to more effectively hide your tracks.

The big question is just how much inconvenience are you willing to put up with to hide your tracks from a nosy friend or co-worker. (If you need to hide your tracks on a company computer to protect your job, you should just stop leaving tracks you need to worry about.)

Most of the tracks you leave behind when surfing the web are left behind to make it easier for you to return to those sites. Sufficient security to keep from leaving tracks increases your download times and requires you to remember addresses you want to revisit.

 

[Bobmi357]

Norton utilities used to include a program they called a "secure erase", basically it overwrote the file with alternating binary patterns before it deleted it. The idea here was simple, and still effective even today. Even if they DO recover the file, it contains useless junk.

If you are that concerned about the issue, and this sounds like a work computer. Why don't you just NOT use that computer to surf porn material? Afterall, its not really your computer, it belongs to your company.

 

[quickfoot]

PGP also includes the secure wiping feature, you can download pgp free from pgpi.org.

You will want to overwrite a minimum of 7 times, even then it can be recovered using data recovery techniques but it is good for general data you don't want to be easily recovered using commonly available undelete software. To get closer to DOD standards use 21 wipes per file (PGP lets you configure yow many times you want to wipe the file). PGP also includes a utility that will wipe all the free space on your hard disk, eliminating traces of files that were normally deleted before the software was installed.

The way the secure delete is done is the file is marked as deleted and then the file writes binary 0 and 1's or random data over the hard drive sectors where the data was stored several times. This makes it much harder for conventional data recovery tools to obtain valid data.


The most secure way to permnately delete data from a disk is to obtain acid and liquify the hard disk platters but most people don't go to that extreme.

Use a browser that allows you to easily clear your history and cache like Opera or Firebird, using TWEAK UI you can turn off recent file tracking in windows, this will prevent the recent documents window from being populated in Windows (some applications may not respect this setting).

If you are of legal age though you shouldn't have to worry about too much, except clearing the cache and your browser history and maybe your recent documents before someone comes over.

If someone with the technicial ability to discover what you were looking at comes into contact with your computer and decides to perform the unethical act of snooping in areas they shouldn't be in I would confront them, there is no place for unethical people in the true technical profession.

 

[wicked woman]

If someone with the technicial ability to discover what you were looking at comes into contact with your computer and decides to perform the unethical act of snooping in areas they shouldn't be in I would confront them, there is no place for unethical people in the true technical profession.

Quickfoot...I think it's a different story if you're on a computer at work. They have a right to expect you to stay off porn sites. We had a guy fired on the spot for just that thing.

 

[Bobmi357]

If someone with the technicial ability to discover what you were looking at comes into contact with your computer and decides to perform the unethical act of snooping in areas they shouldn't be in I would confront them, there is no place for unethical people in the true technical profession.

What you do with your own machine at home is your business. What you may do with an employers machine, is HIS business.

Looking at the files/websites/cookies that someone else has viewed on a home computer is snooping. Unethical? Perhaps, its certainly not part of my ethics system, but ethics vary with individuals. On the other hand an employer has a right to know you are using the machine for its intended purpose. And if that means spying on people by examining cached files, logs, histories etc, thats their right.

Back in the early 90's I ran a corporate network of more than 1200 nodes. Periodically I would be told by upper management to sweep the network and the workstations for illegal software, scan emails etc... Thank god at the time this was a private net with no connection to the internet. That would have only compounded and complicated things enormously.

On a private home system, you can pretty much do as you please. What you do at work however is an entirely different story.

I treat my wife's pc as I do her purse. If I want or need something from it, I have her get it for me. Its her private space and I'll respect that, and I know she respects my pc's space.

 

[Carnus]

One way is to just manually go to your internet cache, delete all files, go to your settings tab, delete history and forms, then empty the trash, and finally reboot, that will kill almost any trace out there.

Carnus

 

[quickfoot]

Of course work is a totally different story, you will be hard pressed to find an employer that does not clearly indicate they have the right to search your computer at any time.

If you are looking at inappropiate material at work you have bigger problems than trying to delete it from your computer.

Most companies in the know filter and log their internet traffic at the backbone meaning they know what you are looking at without ever having to come to your computer.

Additionally many employers track IP addresses to computers assigned to the individual employee, this makes it easy to find the owner of computers infected with viruses and identifying people that are abusing the Internet use privileges.

There are several ways around the logging and tracking systems but doing so is not considered ethical by most people except in cases where firewalls are overly restrictive and it is general practice to use subversive techniques in order to complete your assigned duties. Most commonly this is used in cases where FTP is blocked at the firewall.

Bottom line is don't do things at work you don't want people knowing about, people make a good living tracking people down

Most good employers wont fire people for the ocassional mistake, everyone that works online accidentally mistypes a word eventually and winds up at an inappropiate site.

There was a case of a security manager firing people because porn site cookies were found on their computers, what had happened was hidden images were embedded in e-mails and people were being extorted.

My employer asks that we alert them when we accidentally visit a site so that they can account for the hits if they are questioned.