Does XP track your data?

  • Thread starter Thread starter D
  • Start date Start date
D

D

Is it possible for professional hardcore guys to look into your computer and
see old stuff you might've had on it at one time before you deleted it? If
I ever run for president, I dont want someone nailing me with some old porn
pop-ups or something. LOL.... no seriously tho- How can you THOUROUGHLY
clean your system from old crap without formatting and reinstalling? What
are the hidden 'secrets' I should know about so I can go in and clean those
as well??? Thanks for any tips...
D
 
D said:
Is it possible for professional hardcore guys to look into your
computer and
see old stuff you might've had on it at one time before you deleted
it? If I ever run for president, I dont want someone nailing me with
some old porn
pop-ups or something. LOL.... no seriously tho- How can you
THOUROUGHLY clean your system from old crap without formatting and
reinstalling? What are the hidden 'secrets' I should know about so I
can go in and clean those
as well??? Thanks for any tips...
D
Click to expand...

Yes, it is totally possible to see everything, without too much trouble
I might add. The only way to completely cover your tracks is to wipe
the drive to Dept. of Defense standards (DOD) which is with at least 7
passes of writing random 0's and 1's to the drive. Of course, this
erases all data on the drive, so that isn't useful for you if you don't
want to format/reinstall. Just formatting and reinstalling by
themselves won't make old data unrecoverable, either. If the tension is
too great for you, I highly recommend Darik's Boot and Nuke, but
remember this utility has that name for a reason.

Malke
 
If you can afford to run for President, you can afford to yank out the hard
drive and smash it up with a hammer. Hard drives are so cheap nowadays.

If you want to nuke the data on the hard drive and contribute it to a
charitable org for your Presidential campaign, try "Darik's Boot and Nuke"
to obliterate rather than delete files. It's available for download at

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

along with information and it's FREE!. There are also links to other
disk-wipers.
 
You don't have to go to all those extremes. There are utilities out there
that will go through the unallocated space on any hard drive and perform DOD
wipes. You have eliminated most of the problem right there without losing
your current configuration.

Brian
 
Yeah, I'm not running for President- I think my experiences in college blew
that life path for me... LOL!

I dont want to wipe the HD and reinstall anything. I want to keep my
machine, but, make damn sure all the old porn crap is off it- Im using this
machine for business now and don't want anything resurfacing for some reason
down the line- ya know? What do you suggest for all this?
Thanks
 
: Yeah, I'm not running for President- I think my experiences in college blew
: that life path for me... LOL!
:
: I dont want to wipe the HD and reinstall anything. I want to keep my
: machine, but, make damn sure all the old porn crap is off it- Im using this
: machine for business now and don't want anything resurfacing for some reason
: down the line- ya know? What do you suggest for all this?
: Thanks
:

I suggest you whomp up Google and search the web for "DOD Wipe".
 
If you're running XP Pro, "cipher /w" at the cmdline does a decent job of
this.
 
Drew said:
If you're running XP Pro, "cipher /w" at the cmdline does a decent job of
this.
Click to expand...

There are two DOD wipe programs I know of -- Possibly more.

My Favorite is Norton (in with their Sysworks), and one I
just dl'd from tucows is called bcwipe (for bestcrypt) from
best data systems.
Look on PCmag ZDnet/Cnet , and on other shareware sites such
as tucows. You can find one as low as $19 US but these are
not often good. Bestdata bestcrypt wiper is about 39 USD and
sounds like it will do a decent job.

One other item is that you need to clean out the registry
what files were handled as well. These places are "comdlg32"
,copyMoveTo, and RecentFiles lists along with StreamMRU.
In the righ pane of these keys is the data. Item such as
1,2,3 or a,b,c can be deleted. The MRUlist or MRUlistEx
values remain but are opened in dialog and the contents of
the list are removed. MRUlistEx must end in 4 par of F's in
order to function. All other number/letter pairs are erased
by pressing/holding del key on the keyboard.

When theses keys and their subkeys are cleaned, the
database is then expunged of any record that the system had
of what files were handled.

No records and files that are trashed to where no-one can
retrieve them is the key to a clean system.
 
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