How to remove all traces of pornography from a work related computer system

  • Thread starter Thread starter stuart
  • Start date Start date
S

stuart

I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all traces
of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100% remove as in
nobody can find any traces of it.
 
stuart said:
I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all
traces of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100% remove
as in nobody can find any traces of it.
Click to expand...

100% answer --- "reformat and reload " at least
 
legal or not what is it doing on your pc in the first place?
Visit my web site http://freespace.virgin.net/john.freelanceit/index.htm
Click on the Life saver tab and take a look at the short review of Evidence
Eliminator. This is commercial software so you will have to pay for it. This
is about the only software I know of that is capable of removing all traces
of files. If you want to buy a copy you can use the link on my site.
If you decide to buy the product you might like to click on the options and
then click the 'drive ops' tab. Next click the file structure tab and then
enable the secure under writing of file structure. This prevents evidence
being by forensic experts using an electron microscope. If you are using FAT
or FAT32 you might also like to enable the same feature on the Directory
structure tab.
 
stuart said:
I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all
traces of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100%
remove as in nobody can find any traces of it.
Click to expand...

Format the partitions on the hard disk, delete the partitions. If it
were really legal pornography then you don't need to worry about the
FBI, NSA, Ontrack, or anyone else with electron microscopes and
cleanroom facilities digging into the residual magnetism on the
platters. You did not say that you had super-sensitive business
information on the hard disk that you had to ensure would never get
divulged by releasing the hard disk outside your organization;
otherwise, you would be physically destroying the drive. You just want
to get rid of the porn on the drive that presumably some employee,
friend, or family member put on it before you give it to another
employee, friend, or family member.

Formatting is also sufficient if you are selling off the drive if all
you're doing is getting rid of the porn and everything else on it. You
could slide it into another Windows system as a slave drive and use
Eraser to repeatedly wipe the files and sectors within the partitions
and then format and delete the partitions, but such deep erasure is not
required based on what little you have told us.
 
John Barnett MVP said:
legal or not what is it doing on your pc in the first place?
Click to expand...

I chose to download from the internet some legal pornography for my viewing
pleasure and now I want to remove all traces of it on this computer. That is
why it is on my computer system. I hope this answers your enquiry to your
satisfaction.
 
Stuart,

Yddap has the most correct answer though people claim (I quite sure) they
can still recover data after an FDISK and reformat. For now, log onto your
machine (from a reboot) in an administrator's account other than your own.

Go to,

rootdrive\Documents and Settings\username\Cookies
Delete all from here especially Index.dat file,

rootdrive\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\History
Delete all sub entries except desktop.ini,

rootdrive\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet
Files\Content.IE5
Delete all from here especially Index.dat file,

From Internet Explorers' settings clear history that appears in its' search
bar.

Via google get a trial version of Vopt defrag program, defrag your disk and
then use the tool that performs I think it was 21 deletes over the 'unused'
or unreferenced space on the disk, may take a few years to complete the
delete operation.

This will stop the scratch the surface investigator, but like I've read, if
someone wants to go deep they will find something..

There are also 3 party tools that will do all of the above.

Regards,
Winux P

Happy and safe New Year Newgroup...

:
: : >I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all
: >traces of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100% remove
: >as in nobody can find any traces of it.
: >
: >
: >
:
: 100% answer --- "reformat and reload " at least
: --
:
: Yddap
: Remove guts to reply
:
:
 
_Vanguard_ said:
Format the partitions on the hard disk, delete the partitions. If it were
really legal pornography then you don't need to worry about the FBI, NSA,
Ontrack, or anyone else with electron microscopes and cleanroom facilities
digging into the residual magnetism on the platters. You did not say that
you had super-sensitive business information on the hard disk that you had
to ensure would never get divulged by releasing the hard disk outside your
organization; otherwise, you would be physically destroying the drive.
You just want to get rid of the porn on the drive that presumably some
employee, friend, or family member put on it before you give it to another
employee, friend, or family member.

Formatting is also sufficient if you are selling off the drive if all
you're doing is getting rid of the porn and everything else on it. You
could slide it into another Windows system as a slave drive and use Eraser
to repeatedly wipe the files and sectors within the partitions and then
format and delete the partitions, but such deep erasure is not required
based on what little you have told us.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly correct, it is of course 100% legal, however it is still
pornography and I wish this activity to remain 100% private and unknown. I
have read that it is possible that snoopers can access this data even if you
delete it from your system.
 
Open Internet Explorer and use the Tools-Internet Options menu to delete all Offline Content from your Temporary Internet Files. Also, delete all cookies and clear the history.

If you use Outlook Express to browse binary newsgroups containing pornography, you'll need to open Windows Explorer and browse to the Local Settings folder for your username under Documents and Settings. Open the Application Data folder, then the Identities folder. For each Identity, drill-down into the Outlook Express folder and delete all files containing the names of newsgroups that you don't want people to see.

Assuming you haven't downloaded a bunch of movies or files and stashed them in a location that you can't find, just Empty the Recycle Bin and that will give you pretty good coverage.

I haven't tried it in quite a while, but you may want to download TweakUI from the following site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

I think it has some sort of "Paranoia Setting" that clears alot of this stuff up automatically, if I recall correctly.

Anyway, as others have pointed out, someone with the right computer forensics tool can still recover some of your deleted files. You can thwart some of that by defragging the hard drive.

carl
 
stuart said:
Yes, exactly correct, it is of course 100% legal, however it is still
pornography and I wish this activity to remain 100% private and unknown. I
have read that it is possible that snoopers can access this data even if you
delete it from your system.
Click to expand...

YES... you can delete it.. you can Format and it is Still there ..

it is There until another File writes over that area of the Disk..
I heard that if You Delete it, Then Run DEFRAG it May OVERWRITE those
Sectors

Writing ZEROS to the HARD drive will get rid of it..

But That takes a LONG time..
 
A Friend of Mine, Who is A PRIVATE DECTIVE Uses A Software Called
PUFFER to Write over The ALL the Empty SECTORS ..
He says it doesnot take that long to Complete
 
'PUFFER?', thanks Santa I'll look that one up, Vopt defrag takes years...!

http://www.briggsoft.com/puffer.htm is where to get it, looks good. Seems
like a whole industry is catering for this sort of thing. Why MS doesn't
allow you to easly delete the Index.dat files in the internet related
directories is beyond me. No punch at MS I love WinXP Pro...

Winux P

Happy and safe New Year Newgroup...


:A Friend of Mine, Who is A PRIVATE DECTIVE Uses A Software Called
: PUFFER to Write over The ALL the Empty SECTORS ..
: He says it doesnot take that long to Complete
:
:
: Winux P wrote:
:
: > Stuart,
: >
: > Yddap has the most correct answer though people claim (I quite sure)
they
: > can still recover data after an FDISK and reformat. For now, log onto
your
: > machine (from a reboot) in an administrator's account other than your
own.
: >
: > Go to,
: >
: > rootdrive\Documents and Settings\username\Cookies
: > Delete all from here especially Index.dat file,
: >
: > rootdrive\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\History
: > Delete all sub entries except desktop.ini,
: >
: > rootdrive\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary
Internet
: > Files\Content.IE5
: > Delete all from here especially Index.dat file,
: >
: > From Internet Explorers' settings clear history that appears in its'
search
: > bar.
: >
: > Via google get a trial version of Vopt defrag program, defrag your disk
and
: > then use the tool that performs I think it was 21 deletes over the
'unused'
: > or unreferenced space on the disk, may take a few years to complete the
: > delete operation.
: >
: > This will stop the scratch the surface investigator, but like I've read,
if
: > someone wants to go deep they will find something..
: >
: > There are also 3 party tools that will do all of the above.
: >
: > Regards,
: > Winux P
: >
: > Happy and safe New Year Newgroup...
: >
: > : > :
: > : : > : >I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all
: > : >traces of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100%
remove
: > : >as in nobody can find any traces of it.
: > : >
: > : >
: > : >
: > :
: > : 100% answer --- "reformat and reload " at least
: > : --
: > :
: > : Yddap
: > : Remove guts to reply
: > :
: > :
: >
: >
 
stuart said:
Yes, exactly correct, it is of course 100% legal, however it is still
pornography and I wish this activity to remain 100% private and
unknown. I have read that it is possible that snoopers can access this
data even if you delete it from your system.
Click to expand...



Eraser
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
 
start said:
I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all traces
of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100% remove as in
nobody can find any traces of it.
Click to expand...


Your employer's IT department will be able to help you with that.
Right after they escort you to the H.R. department.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
 
Bruce said:
Your employer's IT department will be able to help you with that.
Right after they escort you to the H.R. department.
Click to expand...
Darik's Boot and Nuke. It will not take that long, perhaps an hour. Of
course, this wipes everything, including the operating system so you
should know your IT Dept. will notice something is missing.

Malke
 
John Barnett MVP said:
legal or not what is it doing on your pc in the first place?
Visit my web site http://freespace.virgin.net/john.freelanceit/index.htm
Click on the Life saver tab and take a look at the short review of
Evidence Eliminator. This is commercial software so you will have to pay
for it. This is about the only software I know of that is capable of
removing all traces of files. If you want to buy a copy you can use the
link on my site.
If you decide to buy the product you might like to click on the options
and then click the 'drive ops' tab. Next click the file structure tab and
then enable the secure under writing of file structure. This prevents
evidence being by forensic experts using an electron microscope. If you
are using FAT or FAT32 you might also like to enable the same feature on
the Directory structure tab.
Click to expand...


DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS SOFTWARE!!!
It is sold by SPAMMERS and LIARS!
http://ee-sucks.tripod.com/
or google "Evidence Eliminator sucks"
 
I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all traces
of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100% remove as in
nobody can find any traces of it.
Click to expand...

Legal or illegal, you remove it the same way. You get the utility
software that comes with whatever brand of harddrive you have in
the computer (download it from the harddrive Web site if you
haven't got the floppy), put it on a floppy disk, boot from the
disk, and run that part of it that writes zeros to the entire
drive. This not only deletes anything at all on the drive, but
overwrites the entire drive with zeros. Only a heavy duty team
from the FBI or NSA or whatever can recover data from such a drive.

If you want to defeat even their police-state attempts, you have
two courses of action.

Course A, a software that overwrites the drive more than once. It
does the same as the so-called "low level format" software that
comes with the harddrive utility bootable floppy, but does it
numerous times with different patterns. This is pretty much
unbeatable.

The other solution, Course B, is a hammer. Take the drive out, set
it on a concrete block, and pound hell out of it with a hammer
until it is totally flattened. You will want to severely deform
the drive platters inside the drive.

The advantage of Course A is that you can reuse the drive.
 
I would like to know what is needed to be done in order to remove all traces
of legal pornography from a computer system. I do mean 100% remove as in
nobody can find any traces of it.
Click to expand...

As others have said, the only method to ensure your machine is clean of
your wrong-doing is to wipe it, then DOD erase it, then return it to
service.

Unfornately there is no such thing as "Legal Porn" in the corporate
environment - Almost every company has a policy about not using the
computers for unethical or personal use and I've yet to see a company
approve of Porn. It's obvious that YOU already understood that it was
inappropriate before you started down that path.

In a typical system, you can delete and defrag, and simple unerase tools
can easily recover files, history, etc... Your best bet, while not
something you may be willing to do, is to go to the IT department and
tell them what you did, then ask them to clean the machine. As long as
the porn was not illegal in your area you may not have any problem -
except that the IT department may start watching your traffic.
 
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