Is This A Con Or True !!!!!!
Author
Discussion

discodave

Original Poster:

324 posts

245 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
just received this e-mail
should i do it ? ( not that i have anything to hide ) i hope

PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE regarding the websites you visit, your chat conversations, and all of your Internet and other PC files:

Don't lose your job, get divorced, become embarrassed, or be sent to prison because of what you do on your home or office computer!

Are you aware that your computer is also a recording device? Almost every action you make is recorded and can be easily retrieved by anyone, not just by a computer geek but by an average computer user such as your spouse, boss, friend, or anyone who has access to the PC you use.

Press here to learn more


For example, web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox can save every image and every website you open. Windows might save every login name and password you type. Media players often keep records of every movie and video clip you watch.

Without Evidence Nuker your computer is as private as a diary left on a restaurant table for anyone to read, and thousands of people have been fired, divorced and even sent to prison over what was found on their PC! Do you want your loved ones, employers, or law enforcement agencies to know everything you do Online?

For no cost at all you can download Evidence Nuker today and run a FREE scan that will show you a listing of deleted files, emails, chat transcripts, audio and video files, temporary internet files, image files (all formats), search histories, clipboard data, passwords, internet history, stored cookies and so much more! After you see everything that has been easily recovered you can use Evidence Nuker to permanently delete everything you want erased!

Press Here to Scan your PC For No Cost


Do you know the "Recycle Bin" does not destroy data?

There are tools that can retrieve deleted files even if a new file has been written where the old one used to be. Not even formatting your hard drive is a guarantee of privacy! You should never give away an old computer before permanently deleting all of the personal information you have left on it.

Evidence Nuker gives you a choice of several deletion methods including the one approved by the Department of Defense (DOD 5220.22-M standard) and the one scientifically proven to be sufficient (Guttman).

Press Here to Scan your PC For No Cost

docevi1

10,430 posts

278 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
it is true, but that is a bit scaremongering in an effort for you to buy their software.

IE / Firefox etc generally cache files meaning it's faster to download next time, similarly passwords/logins are saved in an effort to save time next time you visit the site. Histories in all programs record what you have been to recently to allow you faster access...

Recently opened files in Windows are stored...

Files are never "deleted", all that happens is the sector on the disk is marked as writable - if nothing writes over that sector the contents can be retrieved (can be solved by zero filling the drive).


Unless you are doing something shady (in that case don't take it to PC World and say "don't look in that folder", don't worry about it - these things are there to help you.

r988

7,498 posts

259 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
It's mostly true, but using scare tactics, if you aren't looking at naughty stuff that you would be embarassed if someone else found out then there is no real point getting it.

You can clean most of that stuff by hand for free or with other free programs anyway, particularly the web browsing stuff.

spidermanUK

808 posts

259 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
r988 said:
You can clean most of that stuff by hand for free or with other free programs anyway, particularly the web browsing stuff.

Would you care to suggest some?

discodave

Original Poster:

324 posts

245 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
i meant would it harm my computer as most things like that always seem too good to be true

discodave

Original Poster:

324 posts

245 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
spidermanUK said:
r988 said:
You can clean most of that stuff by hand for free or with other free programs anyway, particularly the web browsing stuff.

Would you care to suggest some?


voyds9

8,490 posts

313 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
spidermanUK said:
r988 said:
You can clean most of that stuff by hand for free or with other free programs anyway, particularly the web browsing stuff.

Would you care to suggest some?

CCleaner, window washer used to be free but now sadly is to pay for.

thepassenger

6,962 posts

265 months

Friday 28th July 2006
quotequote all
discodave said:
i meant would it harm my computer as most things like that always seem too good to be true

In all probablity yes, using the advertised product would 'harm' your computer as often these the products advertised in spam messages contain backdoors or spyware themselves.
Alternativley they do things in the most inefficient manner possible and make your system sluggish (at which point they have a utility they can sell you for £xx that will fix it).

There is a sticky at the top of the thread that contains freeware (or donnation ware) utilities that can remove files, tidy up Windows's registry and so on.

philthy

4,697 posts

270 months

Saturday 29th July 2006
quotequote all
spidermanUK said:

Would you care to suggest some?


Just use windows defrag.

neil_cardiff

17,113 posts

294 months

Saturday 29th July 2006
quotequote all
philthy said:
spidermanUK said:

Would you care to suggest some?


Just use windows defrag.


How the hell would that make a difference? That doesn't destroy data, just merely moves it about a bit so the disk has to do less searching as all the blocks are rearranged neatly on the disk (thats my technical understanding).

It wouldn't 'hide' any data.

Pretty much nothing 'hides' data - you can only perform multipass wipes to do that, and even then the authorities/geeks would be able to retrieve stuff.

I frequently recover deleted data off my servers where users have been twunts.

aldi

9,292 posts

267 months

Saturday 29th July 2006
quotequote all
neil_cardiff said:
philthy said:
spidermanUK said:

Would you care to suggest some?


Just use windows defrag.


How the hell would that make a difference? That doesn't destroy data, just merely moves it about a bit so the disk has to do less searching as all the blocks are rearranged neatly on the disk (thats my technical understanding).

It wouldn't 'hide' any data.

Pretty much nothing 'hides' data - you can only perform multipass wipes to do that, and even then the authorities/geeks would be able to retrieve stuff.

I frequently recover deleted data off my servers where users have been twunts.


I think it makes it harder to recover the data because of the way that defrag works. If you delete a file the space is marked as free but not immediatley overwritten, hence the possiblity of recovering it. Then you run a defrag which shuffles data back towards the edge of the disk and hopefully overwrites the free space where your file used to be, making recovery too expensive to bother with for most people since as I understand it after one overwrite your into the territory of having to take the platters out and read them with specialist equipment. I aggree defrag is possibly a bit hit and miss for Gary Glitter or Enron executive purposes though!

FunkyNige

9,840 posts

305 months

Saturday 29th July 2006
quotequote all
voyds9 said:

CCleaner, window washer used to be free but now sadly is to pay for.


CCleaner can also properly delete files if you want it to by writing over the sector of the drive where the file was stored with random data a few times.

philthy

4,697 posts

270 months

Saturday 29th July 2006
quotequote all
Thank you aldi for expanding on my post.
R988 asked about free stuff that would shift most things. Defrag will tidy up the platter in the way described by Aldi, but is hit and miss. That being said it's rumoured not even a complete format will hide data from some top software.
If you're going to try and hide something that is that sensitive, surely you'd expect to pay for it?

thepassenger

6,962 posts

265 months

Saturday 29th July 2006
quotequote all
Poking around on-line it seems that the final stage of safley deleting classified data involves either a blast furnace or incinerator (after various other steps), that includes drives that may or may not have been exposed to such information.

So ultimatley if you have data that is very very important that you want to erase.... remove the HDD and melt it along with any and all backups to form a random composite slag is the way forward. In general terms anything more than a few random overwrites and the file's gone as far as most off the shelf utilities are concerned.