[Dark RevenantX]

/deletes History
/deletes Cookies
/encrypts folders

Welp, that takes care of that.

Thats not enough.  You need to find a file ANNIHILATION program that actually wipes the data by writing a solid block of pure 0 or 1 bits over the files to be deleted.  Throwing stuff in the trash folder just categorizes it as "deleted" and therefore overwritable; it doesn't ACTUALLY get rid of the data.

[Mars]

I would tell you to encrypt your file system, but apparently it's pretty easy to hack one with some canned air and liquid nitrogen.

[BloodEagle]

/deletes History
/deletes Cookies
/encrypts folders

Welp, that takes care of that.

Thats not enough.  You need to find a file ANNIHILATION program that actually wipes the data by writing a solid block of pure 0 or 1 bits over the files to be deleted.  Throwing stuff in the trash folder just categorizes it as "deleted" and therefore overwritable; it doesn't ACTUALLY get rid of the data.

%SystemRoot%\System32\dfrg.msc

[karajorma]

Till you get caught by having a thumbs.db file that is.

[Admiral_Stones]

rm ./

UNIX ftw.

[Stealth]

don't kid yourself... the NSA has machines that read magnetic residue on drives.

you could format, and install the OS from scratch, and they could still see 95% of the data you had before the format.

[BloodEagle]

don't kid yourself... the NSA has machines that read magnetic residue on drives.

you could format, and install the OS from scratch, and they could still see 95% of the data you had before the format. [citation needed]

[blackhole]

Magnet.

[Mars]

It's pretty easy to make data really hard to read; it's pretty hard to be 100% sure of eliminating the data however. It's just like every other piece of evidence. It's pretty easy to make it tough to tell forensically what happened, it's pretty damn hard to make it impossible.

Honestly unless your a practicing pedophile, an international terrorist, or a hacker working for a foreign power against the Chinese or US government. (or doing anything at all on the internet in China) The NSA probably doesn't give a rats ass about you.

That's not to say that there isn't horrible invasion of privacy, but right now it's only that. No one is going to arrest average Joe-down-the-street for being into feet YET and these sorts of measures are completely unnessesary.

It'd be like wearing a hat, coveralls, and rubber gloves before jaywalking.

<EDIT>

Couldn't think of a better example than jaywalking, yes porn is legal, but you get the idea.

[Charismatic]

Thought porn was legal.

[Mefustae]

Thought porn was legal.

It helps to read the thread before you post.

[Stealth]

don't kid yourself... the NSA has machines that read magnetic residue on drives.

you could format, and install the OS from scratch, and they could still see 95% of the data you had before the format. [citation needed]

Source: Myself. I've done extensive work for the NSA, and continue to do so.

[Stealth]

just kidding... i wish i could work for the NSA.

actually i don't know where i got that from, but i've formatted hard drives before, personally, then gone back and retrieved 85% of the data.  If i can do it, with freeware software, 4 or 5 years ago, then i'm betting they can... and they do.  i've read about such machines

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I've seen a program where they were able to do this with other magnetic media like video and backup tapes.  They can ignore the information that is on there now and pick up the data that was on there before.  Might have seen it on the Discovery or Science channel. 

On a side note anyone remember something like PCtools version 6 that came with a hard drive utility program that would wipe the drive to military standards?  Now that took awhile to run. 

[MP-Ryan]

People... it's called a low-level format.

Hard disks store data magnetically, using a binary switch (1 or a 0).  When you delete data on a hard disk normally all it does is erase the file entry in the OS's file tables.  In order to actually erase the data, you need to re-write to the region to eliminate all trace of the previous information.  This is accomplished by either re-writing new data over the old (which doesn't get rid of everything), or writing zeroes to the drive.  Commerical-grade software also exists that constantly writes nonsense-data to sectors containing deleted information to ensure any deleted files cannot be recovered.

Magnets "erase" hard disks because they physically reset the information on the drive to its base-state... providing of course you take the time to do a complete sweep of the data device.  Magnets can also muck up the internal mechanisms of the HD so it dies anyway but leaves the data intact.

At any rate, a complete low-level format of a hard disk will make any and all data on it completely unrecoverable, even to military-grade sweeper software (as it happens, I tried it once).

[colecampbell666]

One program I've seen (Active@ Killdisk) can do 35-pass random character writes to the disk. I think that's sufficient protection.

[Mika]

Deducting from the amount of text discussing how to really delete stuff from hard drives in this thread, one could make some interesting conclusions about the perversions of the HLP forumites...

[Mars]

lol... 



I hope not.

[Woolie Wool]

It's pretty easy to make data really hard to read; it's pretty hard to be 100% sure of eliminating the data however. It's just like every other piece of evidence. It's pretty easy to make it tough to tell forensically what happened, it's pretty damn hard to make it impossible.

Honestly unless your a practicing pedophile, an international terrorist, or a hacker working for a foreign power against the Chinese or US government. (or doing anything at all on the internet in China) The NSA probably doesn't give a rats ass about you.

That's not to say that there isn't horrible invasion of privacy, but right now it's only that. No one is going to arrest average Joe-down-the-street for being into feet YET and these sorts of measures are completely unnessesary.

It'd be like wearing a hat, coveralls, and rubber gloves before jaywalking.

<EDIT>

Couldn't think of a better example than jaywalking, yes porn is legal, but you get the idea.

Why would they arrest you for downloading foot fetish porn ever? They would have no reason to care about anything except child porn, rape porn, and snuff films. It's not 1910 anymore. Just take the "yet" off of that statement because banning porn is not going to happen. Even pedophile crap is legal if it has no real children in it.

And if you do download child porn...**** you. Really. How can you have sympathy for people who sexually explot kids?

[Admiral_Stones]

Six Steps:

1. Encrypt all your Hard Drive with a 1024 Bit Encryption.
2. Delete it all securely (overwriting it completely with 1 or 0).
3. Reformat Hard Drive.
4. Put near a extremely strong magnet, preferably the magnetic field of a Nuclear Power Generator.
5. Burn it.
6. Throw all ashes into a lake/river.

Eat this, NSA.