Did you know your own computer is syping on you? Did you know
that every click you make on your windows start menu is logged
to a hidden, encrypted database in your computer?
It's very important that you 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.
People ARE spying on you!! Companies are beginning to check
the contents of their employees computers after working hours.
Have you been surfing and sending email during working hours?
Would your boss approve of this? If not, your job could be in
jeopardy.
Think this sounds a bit outrageous?
--- 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.
--- January 5, 2001 --- Leading Insurance Company Royal and
Sun Alliance sacked 10 people and suspended at least 77 over
the distribution of "Lewd" E-mails.
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! Did you know that when you do a
search on the internet, this 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
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
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, Floppys, Zip drives and tape cartridges.
Skeptical person that I am, I decided to do an experiment to
find out exactly HOW MUCH hidden stuff really was on my
computer. If you are a Windows 95/98 user, try this experiment
yourself.
1. Delete all your files from your Windows 95/98 recycle bin
using the standard 'Empty Recycle Bin' command.
2. Open your browser and delete the history files and browser
cache from your preferences/options menu.
3. Open Windows Explorer and right click on the drive letter
you use for your main hard drive. Select "Properties"
4. Write down your drive's total Capacity, Used Space and
Free Space; you'll need this later.
5. Download the
Evidence EliminatorT free trial program.
6. Run the Evidence Eliminator(TM).
7. Repeat step 3 and compare how much free space is now
available on your hard drive.
Here's the results of my experiment:
Total hard drive space 30,677,901,312 bytes (28.5GB)
Available space before Evidence Eliminator: 26,893,676,544 bytes
Available space AFTER Evidence Eliminator: 26,620,821,504 bytes
Total reclaimed space: 272,855,040 bytes
To translate, Evidence Eliminator(TM) removed over 260MB of
files from my computer! This isn't much for those of us who
have mega-space on our hard drives, but for those with more
limited space, 260MB is a lot!
Here's some astonishing information I discovered about files
on my computer:
295 Windows Application logs were found. These logs stored
information about what windows programs I've been using each
day.
There were almost 90 "components" discovered and removed that
had "installed themselves" to my computer without my
knowledge!
271 Start Menu Recent Documents logs were removed. This held
information about what programs I had selected from my Windows
Start Menu.
3,601 IE cache files were found AFTER I had cleared my IE cache
and history!
1,960 IE cookies were removed. I had full control over which
cookies I kept and which ones I did not.
5,636 Windows .TMP files were found that were NOT removed using
the browser history delete options. Some of these files are
the result of extracting .zip files that were downloaded from
the internet, web pages I viewed off-line, .midi and .wav
files which downloaded during visits to web pages with
background music, etc.
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, not to mention information I
might not want to ever be public knowledge. It's always a good
idea to keep your computer clean of unwanted files and protect
your privacy at the same time.
Are you aware of every single file on your computer? You
should be! Protect yourself from Cyber-Spys and regain control
of what information is stored on your PC. In this world of
high technology, you never can tell when this information
could be found and used.
