What is a good freeware Internet privacy tracks eraser for WinXP?

[bentknuckle]

You're incapable of setting up accounts for the other users of your
computer?
Too dull to know how to 'hide' confidential information on your
computer?

I asked the original question and I am pretty sure I've never set up an
account for another user so, yes, I am unable or unwilling to set up
different accounts when I'm the main user of the computer. The kids use
it sporadically as they have their own. My husband has his own (we're a
typical American family on the outside). The only way I know of to
'hide' confidential information is to encrypt it are you really
suggesting I encrypt my cache and all my MRUs and registry settings and
all my temporary files?

Those who clean their tracks after they've used their computers will
1 - always make a huge ****up at some point.
2 - draw attention to themselves

I guess I already blew it then by asking this question on the Internet.
I guess the minute I deleted my cache, the FBI Carnivore Electronic
Surveillance and Diagnostic Tool was on to me. I just hope they don't
arrest me in fron of the kids.

Have you been turned on by the sight of her bra & nickers?

Ummmm ... yeah!

There are many freeware programs - try asking in the freeware ng.

Name one.

Luckily, others named a few to help without your help.
- CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) http://www.ccleaner.com
- CleanUp! http://home.comcast.net/~sgould4567/software/cleanup
- Free Internet Eraser http://www.dirfile.com/free_internet_eraser.htm
- MRU-Blaster http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrudownload.html

I'll install these four & I'm sure thousands of others will too.
Any other good freebie programs for WinXP privacy seekers?

 

[T. B. W.]

CleanUp!
http://home.comcast.net/~sgould4567/software/cleanup/

DO NOT USE THIS WINDOWS XP CLEANUP! 4.0 PROGRAM!
It's basically a delete-all-files command with NO OPTIONS to stop it!

No matter what you set in the CleanUp! OPTIONS box, it will delete all your
files on your system in any temporary folder (even those NOT named C:
\TEMP)!

I know. I lost many many many files and many hours trying to recover them
from this asinine virus called CleanUp! written by Steven R. Gould (a known
virus hacker) at http://www.stevengould.org

I repeat:
EVEN IF YOU UNCHECK ALL DELETE OPTIONS this program will STILL DELETE
every single one of your files in any folder Steven Gould considers
temporary (including C:\Program Files)!

If you don't believe me, just run the program and watch all your files
disappear!

You have been warned!

 

[Michael Pelletier]

I forgot to mention this is for home use, not corporate use.
Most freeware can't be installed on corporate machines anyway.

Not true. I use Opensource at work and in fact encourage it. It depends if
your IT department is qualified and knowledgeable enough to use it I guess.

I'm looking for a known set of respected programs.
Sort of like for spyware, this handful is generally deemed reasonably
sufficient.
- AdAware SE Personal
- HiJack This
- Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta
- Spyware Blaster
- SpyBot Search & Destroy

The goal of this question is to come up with the handful of freeware
Internet privacy washers that many people deem to be worthy.

What privacy washer do you use?

I use linux/FreeBSD at home (at work we have many too). I do not worry about
spyware or "washing"...

- Im
--
"Trusted Computing" is a SCAM
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Protect your rights
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

 

[Michael Pelletier]

I have Win XP on my PC. I didn't use a privacy washer although I usedd
Windows Washer when I had Win98. For XP, I used AdAware, Spybot, a
trojan scanner, a firewall in addition to XP firewall, and anti virus
software. From there, I just cleaned the cache, history, and cookies
folders. I finally got tired of having to keep all the security
software up to date and switched over to Mac. It's so much easier

Here Here. The Mac OS is really slick...

Michael
--
"Trusted Computing" is a SCAM
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Protect your rights
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

 

[Michael Pelletier]

Do you also hang your washed underwear out on the front lawn?
And, of course, you make love to your wife in front of the kids, right?
You leave your paycheck stubs next to the water cooler at work I'm
sure.
Oh, yes, and you can send me that PDF of your IRS 1040 if you like.
Of course, don't seal the envelope ... otherwise the cops will come
knocking.

Ah come on! There is a big difference there...

I still am very suspicious of my neighbor because she hangs her
underthings out back and she licks her envelopes. She must have
something to hide; I think I'll call the cops.

Back on topic ... I would think PC Magazine would have a good freeware
privacy washer with source code so that you can extend it to the next
program you use. But, I just searched now and I could not find a single
freebie privacy protector on the Ziff-Davis web site. Pity.

It's gonna be up to the nice folks here (all but Far Canal) to help out
with the answers.

--
"Trusted Computing" is a SCAM
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Protect your rights
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

 

[Michael Pelletier]

I asked the original question and I am pretty sure I've never set up an
account for another user so, yes, I am unable or unwilling to set up
different accounts when I'm the main user of the computer. The kids use
it sporadically as they have their own. My husband has his own (we're a
typical American family on the outside). The only way I know of to
'hide' confidential information is to encrypt it are you really
suggesting I encrypt my cache and all my MRUs and registry settings and
all my temporary files?


I guess I already blew it then by asking this question on the Internet.
I guess the minute I deleted my cache, the FBI Carnivore Electronic
Surveillance and Diagnostic Tool was on to me. I just hope they don't
arrest me in fron of the kids.

They "supposedly" did away with that last year...but who knows...

Ummmm ... yeah!


Name one.

Go to the freeware sites and search www.sourceforge.org, etc

Luckily, others named a few to help without your help.
- CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) http://www.ccleaner.com
- CleanUp! http://home.comcast.net/~sgould4567/software/cleanup
- Free Internet Eraser http://www.dirfile.com/free_internet_eraser.htm
- MRU-Blaster http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrudownload.html

I'll install these four & I'm sure thousands of others will too.
Any other good freebie programs for WinXP privacy seekers?

Michael
--
"Trusted Computing" is a SCAM
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Protect your rights
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

 

[Michael Pelletier]

Well, if you must know - I'm gay but I never told my husband or kids.
I don't want them to know about the photos, emails, web sites,
documents, etc. Is that OK with you?

Now will you provide some help for me?

If that is true you have much more to worry about then covering your tracks.
Honestly, if I found my girlfriend had installed such a program, It would
get my attention and I would heavily investigate it. That is the thing you
should worry about. I work in IT security, when I find one of these
programs I will go through every file on that pc. Be careful. Sometimes you
can draw more attention when you really do not want it.

Anyway, good luck with it...
--
"Trusted Computing" is a SCAM
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Protect your rights
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

 

[Leythos]

Well, if you must know - I'm gay but I never told my husband or kids.
I don't want them to know about the photos, emails, web sites,
documents, etc. Is that OK with you?

Now will you provide some help for me?

No. I don't believe you should be ashamed of what you are doing, and if
you are ashamed of it, stop doing it.

The only people that really need to strip activity off their computers
are those that have something to hide, and that usually means unethical
activity or illegal activity, so I have no help to offer them.

 

[Serendipity]

Well, if you must know - I'm gay but I never told my husband or kids.
I don't want them to know about the photos, emails, web sites,
documents, etc. Is that OK with you?

Now will you provide some help for me?

On this ng (mcfl) you're more likely to get snide remarks and spelling
corrections rather than actual help. FWIW, I used a program called
Window Washer. It behaved well and did the job. It was free too. HTH

 

[AvianFlux]

That's not been my experience. Options I've selected/ticked are Custom
CleanUp!, Fully Erase Files, Delete Newsgroup Subscriptions, Delete
Prefetch, Scan Local Drives for Temporary Files, Cleanup All Users.

 

[Default User]

Any other good freebie programs for WinXP privacy seekers?

All of the Javacool programs -
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/products.html

 

[Far Canal]

(e-mail address removed) wrote

I asked the original question and I am pretty sure I've never set up an
account for another user so, yes, I am unable or unwilling to set up
different accounts when I'm the main user of the computer. The kids use
it sporadically as they have their own. My husband has his own (we're a
typical American family on the outside). The only way I know of to
'hide' confidential information is to encrypt it are you really
suggesting I encrypt my cache and all my MRUs and registry settings and
all my temporary files?

Use a different email program for confidential stuff - don't have an
icon for it on the start menu or desktop - set up different email
accounts for that program - ie Gmail. Ditto for web browsing.
Remove 'recent documents' from the start menu.

I guess I already blew it then by asking this question on the Internet.
I guess the minute I deleted my cache, the FBI Carnivore Electronic
Surveillance and Diagnostic Tool was on to me. I just hope they don't
arrest me in fron of the kids.

Your problem. Carpet munching isn't illegal where I live.

Ummmm ... yeah!


Name one.

Luckily, others named a few to help without your help.
- CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) http://www.ccleaner.com
- CleanUp! http://home.comcast.net/~sgould4567/software/cleanup
- Free Internet Eraser http://www.dirfile.com/free_internet_eraser.htm
- MRU-Blaster http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrudownload.html

I'll install these four & I'm sure thousands of others will too.
Any other good freebie programs for WinXP privacy seekers?

By installing such programs, you're indicating you've got something to
hide.

 

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

DO NOT USE THIS WINDOWS XP CLEANUP! 4.0 PROGRAM!
It's basically a delete-all-files command with NO OPTIONS to stop it!

No matter what you set in the CleanUp! OPTIONS box, it will delete all your
files on your system in any temporary folder (even those NOT named C:
\TEMP)!

<snip>

I've been using it for two years now without seeing this. It has
Thorough, Standard, Basic and Custom options, and I've always run it
in Custom mode.

 

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Name one.

Luckily, others named a few to help without your help.
- CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) http://www.ccleaner.com
- CleanUp! http://home.comcast.net/~sgould4567/software/cleanup
- Free Internet Eraser http://www.dirfile.com/free_internet_eraser.htm
- MRU-Blaster http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrudownload.html

I'll install these four & I'm sure thousands of others will too.
Any other good freebie programs for WinXP privacy seekers?

How about EasyCleaner?

Homepage: http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm

 

[canadadianfleece]

That's not been my experience. Options I've selected/ticked are Custom
CleanUp!, Fully Erase Files, Delete Newsgroup Subscriptions, Delete
Prefetch, Scan Local Drives for Temporary Files, Cleanup All Users.

I tried the CleanUp! WinXP download too & I was VERY UPSET!
CleanUp! is fast. Real fast. In seconds it wiped out hundreds of files.
It does NOT matter what the CleanUp! OPTIONS are set to.
It does not matter if you delete the .*tmp in the CleanUp! CUSTOMIZE
tab.
CleanUp! will delete all c:\temp, c:\tmp, & c:\tempor~1 files!

I had to use a bunch of the freeware undelete programs to rescue the
files.
Luckily I plugged in an external disk so I didn't trash the files too
badly.

CleanUp! help doesn't say it deletes all c:\tmp files no matter what!

 

[Mel]

History Scanner and Remover:
- Scans all Cookies
- Delete all or select cookies
- History Chooser
- Deletes IE URL History
- Deletes IE Cache History
- Deletes Windows Media Player History
- Clears Start / Run Menu
- Clears Start / Recent Documents
- Empties recycle bin

New Features:
- Add Directory and file removal
- File Shredding
- Improved Layout

http://www.dancemammal.com/zerotrace.htm

 

[Mel]

This document is only a guide containing recommended security settings;
it is not meant to replace well-structured policy or sound judgment.
Furthermore this guide does not address site-specific configuration
issues. Care must be taken when implementing this guide to address local
operational and policy concerns.

This document was developed at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, which collaborated with NSA, DISA, CIS, and Microsoft to
produce the Windows XP security templates. Pursuant to title 17 Section
105 of the United States Code this document and template are not subject
to copyright protection and is in the public domain. NIST assumes no
responsibility whatsoever for its use by other parties, and makes no
guarantees, expressed or implied, about its quality, reliability, or any
other characteristic. We would appreciate acknowledgement if the
document and template are used.

http://csrc.nist.gov/itsec/guidance_WinXP.html

 

[bentknuckle]

FWIW, I used a program called Window Washer.
It behaved well and did the job. It was free too.

It looks like Webroot & SnapFiles Window Washer 5.5 & 6.x are
trialware.
$40 + tax at http://www.sharewareriver.com/product.php?id=2256
$30 + tax at http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winwasher.html
$30 + tax at
http://www.globalshareware.com/Internet/Online-Privacy/free-window-washer-download.htm

 

[Serendipity]

It looks like Webroot & SnapFiles Window Washer 5.5 & 6.x are
trialware.
$40 + tax at http://www.sharewareriver.com/product.php?id=2256
$30 + tax at http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winwasher.html
$30 + tax at
http://www.globalshareware.com/Internet/Online-Privacy/free-window-washer-download.htm

It was free when I used it but it's been awhile. Personally, I set up
my computers so those types of things don't get on it in the first
place. The very few that slip by, are handled manually. I'm using a
Mac now for online stuff and PC for offline, never connected to internet
stuff. People always complain about pop-ups, ad software, spyware, and
tracking yet do nothing about it. I see no pop-ups or ads. Spyware is
non-existent and tracking can easily be taken care of manually. IMO,
spyware, adware, and tracking invade my privacy. I didn't ask for it to
be on my computer and no, they don't have a right to put it on my
computer. AFAIC, they can jump in the lake!

 

[Mel]

ZeroTracks is your all-in-one privacy solution. ZeroTracks packs
features that most other larger utilities could only dream of. We've
included the ability to decrypt and delete information from hidden
locations in the Registry. If you think your PC is 'clean', download
ZeroTracks and check out the UserAssist feature. We've also included the
ability to WIPE all the Index.dat files on your PC. These files are
locked while Windows is running, but ZeroTracks writes to your hard
drive platters directly, by-passing Windows.

http://myweb.mailbox.co.za/tyd/zero2005.htm