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Preamble;
Did you know that your own computer is spying
on you? Did you also know that every click you make on your windows start menu is logged to a hidden, encrypted
database in your computer?
It should be remembered that it's very important to read a site's privacy policy to find out what information a
web site gathers about you when you visit and how they intend to use it.
Companies are beginning to check the contents of their employees computers after working hours. What is YOUR Companies
Policy concerning the use of their Computer for your own use? Have you been surfing and sending email during working
hours? Would your boss approve of this? If not, your job could be in jeopardy.
Here are a few facts that might be of Interest.
In July 2000
FACT; 50 Workers At Dow Chemical Co.'s Headquarters Site In Michigan were fired and another 200
were Disciplined for distributing, downloading or saving pictures that were either pornographic or violent in nature.
FACT; Merck Fired Two Workers And Disciplined Several Dozen Others for what the Company called
"Inappropriate Use Of The Internet."
FACT; Xerox Corporation, Fired 40 workers and The New York Times terminated 23 employees at a Data
Processing Center for similar offenses.
On January 5, 2001
FACT; Leading Insurance Company Royal and Sun Alliance sacked 10 people and suspended at least
77 over the distribution of "Lewd" E-mails.
***
General;
Your computer keeps records of both your online
and off-line activities. Everything you do is recorded. If you view web pages, movies or videos, play .wav or .midi
files....it is all recorded to your hard drive! When you do a search on the Internet, the search information is
recorded to hidden, encrypted files on your PC? Do you really know what's been downloaded or hidden on your computer?
Forensic analysis has become technologically
superior in finding evidence of all sorts. They can remove your PC's hard drive and discover things about you that
you probably didn't even know was there. Things you "thought" you deleted. You might think you've cleaned
out all your sensitive files, but the truth is, many of them are still there.
Peter Constantine of Data Discovery http://edatadiscovery.com/
says that "....today's computers are "grabbing material and tucking it away in little pigeonholes...
The user has no idea that the data is out there."
Digital Intelligence, Inc, http://www.digitalintel.com/freddie.htm
has developed F.R.E.D.D.I.E. (F)orensic (R)ecovery of (E)vidence (D)evice (I)nterrogation (E)quipment which is
portable and can be used in a crime scene (or any other time for that matter) to recover data from a multitude
of electronic devices including, hard drives, CD's, Floppies, Zip drives and tape cartridges.
***
Experiment;
Having read all this information, I needed
to check for myself and to find out exactly HOW MUCH hidden content there was on my OWN computer. If you are a
Windows 95/98 user, you might like to try this yourself.
1.
Download the Evidence Eliminator free trial program from
http://www.evidence-eliminator.com/go.shtml?A657885
2.
Delete all your files from your Windows 95/98 recycle bin
using the standard 'Empty Recycle Bin' command.
3.
Open your browser and delete the history files and browser
cache from your preferences/options menu.
4. Open Windows Explorer and right click on the drive letter you use for your main hard drive.
Select "Properties" and write down your drive's total Capacity, Used Space and Free Space; obviously
for later comparison.
5.
Install & Run the Evidence Eliminator(TM).
6.
By repeating step 4 it's simple math's to work out how much was in fact hidden away by comparing how much free
space is now available on your hard drive.
Summarized Results;
Total hard drive space 20,510 mgs
Available space before using Evidence Eliminator:
13,680
MG
Available space AFTER Evidence Eliminator:
13,820
MG Reclaimed space: 140 MG
Evidence Eliminator (TM) removed over 140 MB of
files from my computer! And that's with a regular clean-up routine.
Other known outcomes = 260 MG reclaimed
from a 28 gig Hard Drive. Another person reclaimed 184 MG from his 24
gig Drive.
For those of you with limited space, these sort of figures, would be killers.
Here's some fact's & figures from my sojourn.
529 Windows Application logs were found. These logs stored information about what windows programs
I had been using each day.
There were 76 "components" discovered
and removed that had "installed themselves" to my computer without my knowledge!
392 Start Menu Recent Documents logs were removed. These held information about what programs
I had selected from my Windows Start Menu.
5372 IE cache files were found AFTER I had cleared my IE cache and history!
Over 1500 IE cookies were removed. I had full control over which cookies I kept
and which ones I did not.
3377 Windows .TMP files were found that were NOT removed using the browser history delete options,
or other software Utilities. Some of these files were the result of extracting .zip files that were downloaded
from the Internet, web pages viewed off-line, .midi and .wav files which downloaded during visits to web pages
with background music, etc.
Conclusion;
My experiment proved to me that there IS information
about me and my computer usage habits that is stored on my computer which takes up valuable space, I do not want
or need this information to be public knowledge.
That it's always a good idea to keep your computer
clean of files that are not wanted or needed in a manner that will protect your privacy at the same time.
It is a better man than I that is aware of
every file on his computer, (I personally have over 83,000.) My memory is not that good.
That there is a need to Protect ourselves &
keep control of what information is or is not stored on our system.
Recommendations;
Clean out your computer of unwanted files, at the same time
overwrite the reclaimed and free space on your drive so that files can not be found, (yes 'Evidence Eliminator'
will do this also, with a choice of three levels of Security) To get your Trial Copy go-to.
http://www.evidence-eliminator.com/go.shtml?A657885
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