security of temp files

  • Thread starter Thread starter david
  • Start date Start date
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david

Good day all,

I'm curious if any of you can give me an answer to this
question which has been nagging me for awhile. If a
document is written on Word, and then saved to cd, are
there remnants of the files left on the HDD? This is
taking into account that it was never actually saved on
the HDD...only on CD. I'm worried about someone reading
the document without my consent, and i think microsoft has
all kinds of temp files or .dat files and what not. Does
Word create these files without my knowledge, and if they
do, can information be recovered from them?

If it's relevant: XP pro, and Office XP.

Thanks a lot for the help.
 
First off, let me say (as others will also do) - NEVER save directly to
anything other than your hard drive. Then copy and/or move your file to the
other media form. You are just asking to lose your document!

Secondly, when Word is opened, a temp file is created telling the computer
that Word is open. When you open a document, another temp file (or two) are
created telling your computer that the document is open. Word also makes
backups every 10 minutes *Word setting). When you save your document and
close out Word, all these temporary files are automatically deleted. If
your computer locks up, these files remain.

If you were to work on the file on your hard drive, then move it to the CD,
then delete it from the hard drive, the file isn't really gone permanently.
The file CAN be recovered UNTIL the sector(s) that used to contain the file
are overwritten with another file. However, it takes a lot more knowledge
than the average user has since it really doesn't show up in any file
listing, searching, etc.

Hope this clarifies some of your concerns.
 
David,
When you close a Word doc with out saving the temp file
should be removed. However this is not always the case.
Also, the temp files are encrypted and they would not be
able to read the file. If you are still concerned you
should delete your temp files. Hope this helps.
 
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