washing windows mail tracks

[Miller McClure]

Whether I try to manually erase them or use a program like windows washer,
there seems to be no way to completely erase my guilty tracks from Windows
Mail in Vista Home.

I can't even open the log file to see if that's where the tell-tale record
resides; I get a message saying that the file is in use by another program.

Anyone know of a way to really clean the "leftovers" in Mail?

 

[Richard Urban]

As many large corporation CEO's have found out, there is no 100% way of
obliterating your tracks. Their prison sentences attest to this fact. If
someone has access to your computer, and they have the programs,
determination and fortitude to do so, they will likely find what you think
is gone. I have successfully retrieved term papers that were deleted two
weeks prior to my recovering them.

All you can do is wash the unoccupied space within a partition and hope for
the best. Search Google for file washer, disk wiping etc.

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=disk+wiping&src=IE-SearchBox



--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Julian]

As many large corporation CEO's have found out, there is no 100% way of
obliterating your tracks. Their prison sentences attest to this fact. If
someone has access to your computer, and they have the programs,
determination and fortitude to do so, they will likely find what you think
is gone. I have successfully retrieved term papers that were deleted two
weeks prior to my recovering them.

All you can do is wash the unoccupied space within a partition and hope
for the best. Search Google for file washer, disk wiping etc.

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=disk+wiping&src=IE-SearchBox

It can take dozens of overwrites to fully cover tracks.

 

[Neil Harley]

It can take dozens of overwrites to fully cover tracks.

How good is cipher at removing traces? I ran cipher with the /W switch
against a drive and it seems to do 3 passes so I'm dubious about its
effectiveness.

 

[Not Me]

ONLY 1 PASS WITH MY ACETYLENE TORCH SEEMS TO DO THE TRICK...ON CUT...LOL

 

[Julian]

How good is cipher at removing traces? I ran cipher with the /W switch
against a drive and it seems to do 3 passes so I'm dubious about its
effectiveness.

Superficially it will be clean but for someone with sufficiently
sensitive techniques the data can be recovered. I've seen one cleaner
advertised that claims to perform 297 overwrites to meet some NATO
standards.
Meanwhile here is a paper on the subject....
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html