Deleting unwanted material on PC

[Alonso]

I've recieved some emails (adult stuff) I have deleted them but believe they will still be on the hard-drive, it's a work pc and wondered if their was software to clean up the hard-drive - and no it's not stupid pictures just general porn. It would be embarassing to get pulled up on it, but luckily I'm not the only one with the emails,but that's no defence is it.

[Global]

If you're concerned that someone might find these files on your drive, you need to get a program that erases files by writing data over them. This is the only way to be assured that they can not be seen.

When you simply delete a file, virtually all of it still exists on your hard drive except for the entry in the drive's directory. That entry points to the file's location (plural if the file is stored in chunks) and simply tells your operating system that a certain amount of space is available the next time it needs to write something. It all depends on the files it next needs to write, if your email photos were small files and all of your normal files are much bigger those "deleted" email photos could remain on your hard drive for a long time.

Finding them may not be easy, so the odds of someone locating them diminish over time.

The kind of program you need will try to provide you with a directory of deleted files and may ask you which ones you want to overwrite with blank data. Even these algorithms can leave a trail, though, which is why most of these programs will offer to overwrite the space of the disk multiple times (up to 30 or more times), each time using a different mechanism.

This is probably way more than you were worrying about. However, most people should know that in the same way a shredded document can be pieced back together given enough time, resources and motivation, the same may be true for files on your hard drive.

Good luck.

[anitaleeds]

I'm somewhat of a geek by trade (I loathe to disclose), so I hope I can be of some help here. Here's a bit of free, open-source software which you can schedule to overwrite unused areas of your hard disc. That means it will erase any trace of deleted files. That means that once you've deleted all your dodgy emails, your temporary internet files, and whatever else you have to hide, the run Eraser, they're gone. Full stop. End of story. Cannot be recovered. By anyone (including the police).

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php

Majeed- some of your information is very inaccurate. Deleted files are usually very easy to recover providing the area of the disc used to store the file has not been overwritten. There are many available applications, to do this, both free and commercial.

[retan]

Some employers log and archive old employee emails As long as you're using their mail server, what you send through it is their's and they WILL use it against you if they have to. Other places go so far as to "sniff" all unencrypted information and log anything with key words or specific data streams over certain ports (like common chat program ports)... so if you're browsing or chatting about NSFW shite, do it encrypted or at home. If you want to encrypt email... use PGP/OpenPGP.

Oh and anitaleeds is correct... "deleting" doesnt mean its not still there... its just now available to be overwritten, and even then theres still a ghost of the information on the disk usually. Using a free space shredder can be very effective... use multiple "passes" i.e. it will write and re-write information over the old, over and over.

Best way to delete information: open up the hard disk and have a pwerfull magnet, gas, and matches ready. Run magned agross disk multiple times, proceed to drench in petrol, light match, drop over hard disk. watch burn.

[cosmicB]

Download Window Washer, and CCleaner...

Window Washer really cleans out the old garbage.. and CCleaner has an uninstaller tool...

You also need Spybot...

[tictac]

I'm somewhat of a geek by trade (I loathe to disclose), so I hope I can be of some help here. Here's a bit of free, open-source software which you can schedule to overwrite unused areas of your hard disc. That means it will erase any trace of deleted files. That means that once you've deleted all your dodgy emails, your temporary internet files, and whatever else you have to hide, the run Eraser, they're gone. Full stop. End of story. Cannot be recovered. By anyone (including the police).

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php

Majeed- some of your information is very inaccurate. Deleted files are usually very easy to recover providing the area of the disc used to store the file has not been overwritten. There are many available applications, to do this, both free and commercial.

Eraser is good, they just took the technology a step further with overwriting something like thirteen times, instead of just entering a '0' at the beginning of the file as a once-off. Eraser is brilliant for this.

Normally (without Eraser) even when one has overwritten, it's still recoverable, with disk recovery software. One can format it even, and still recover most. EasyRecovery is a very good one.

[cosmicB]

Do a REGEDIT search for the invader's email names.. and delete them all...

Do a FIND for parts of the invader's email name.. and delete them all...

Run Spybot, Window Washer, Reg Mechanic, and CCleaner...

That should eliminate 99% of it...

[tictac]

Is the concern that they would check your machine or the server? Unless you can get to the server physically or remotely they can still find some stuff but it's really doubtful they'd go to that extent.