Did you know your own computer is syping on you? Did you knowthat every click you make on your windows start menu is logged toa hidden, ... database in your ... very ... that you
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
http://www.teleport.com/~peterc/ ) 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, 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 from
http://www.evidence-eliminator.com/go.shtml?A654789
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.
3601 IE cache files were found AFTER I had cleared my
IE cache and history!
1960 IE cookies were removed. I had full control over which
cookies I kept and which ones I did not.
5636 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.
