In this “enlightened” age of technology we tend to take things for granted. We assume, wrongly so, that just because we have antivirus software, or even a hardware firewall, that users online security is guaranteed. We go from website to website never taking into account the traces we leave behind. For some of us, we don’t have internet at home and we might go to a public place such as a library or an internet bar to log on. For those who use these types of services we might take it wrongly assume that our online security is safe because surely the internet bar or library regularly cleans the computers. In all these cases you are, sadly, wrong!

Speaking from personal experience, I know how dangerous it can be to take users internet privacy or security for granted. My brother has a tendency to use the same password for everything (sadly many of us do the same thing!). About a year ago some unscrupulous person discovered his “super-secret” password and was able to wreak havoc. This person gained access to my brother’s personal email, bank accounts, and other sites where he used this same password. Fortunately he realized that this was happening before anything disastrous could occur—he was very lucky.

In recent years the instances of users having their online security violated has increased exponentially. It has become a major concern among common internet users as well as those who maintain the networks. Despite the increased publicity of this epidemic it is still a major problem. There are a few things that you can do to increase your security. Read on…

If you are anything like me, you really like your privacy. I don’t like it when people can see my personal information or can follow up and see what I have been doing. Some people are doing things on their computers that they really don’t want people to know about. Whether you are visiting adult sites or sites that can be embarrassing (especially at work!) you’ll want to know how to cover your tracks. But covering your tracks goes beyond your internet usage. Open up Word or Excel on your computer. Go ahead—I’ll wait. Take a look at the menu and see if you can open a recently used file. If you are at all worried about security or sensitive data why allow someone to see what file you were just working on? In fact if you don’t use Word or Excel (or any other program for that matter) you will see files that you may have opened a week or two ago sitting there in your history. This especially important if you are using a shared computer—you work in a shared office environment or you and your spouse or significant other also use the same computer. Let’s walk through a few steps that you can do to erase your tracks and then I’ll show you a few programs that do a more thorough job.

The first and most important thing you can do is erase your history and temporary files in your internet browser. This varies slightly depending on which browser you are using so for this article I am only going to discuss the two most popular ones—Internet Explorer and Firefox. (Every other browser works basically the same!). Read on…

So you want to wipe your hard disk because you plan on selling or giving away your computer? Or you just want to make sure that all your important stuff is really gone. You may have even had a friend who is a “techie” come over and format your hard drive in preparation for installing a new OS. You feel safe, secure, warm, and fuzzy! You feel like everything is OK in the universe—your security is safe. Sorry to burst the bubble you have been living in, but you are more than likely not protected at all! Your personal information is still out there for the world to see—at least someone with the right tools and skills (which believe it or not are easily accessible and many times free!) What to do? Don’t worry, I am going to explain it to you.

To understand the problem you are facing we need a little lesson on how hard drives work. Hard drives are magnetic and the information is stored on very tiny magnetic rods on the surface of the hard drive platters. When the read/write head adds or removes information it aligns these microscopic rods by their poles (north or south). Depending on how the rods are aligned they represent either 1 or 0, binary language. When a file is added the read/write head aligns the rods. When files are deleted the rods are not realigned. The computer simply removes a reference to the file in the File Allocation Table (FAT). The data is still there, it’s just that your computer doesn’t realize it. This is the root of the problem. The FAT table can be rebuilt using easily attainable software and anyone can then see your information.

The solution to this problem is to overwrite the data that has been stored with random characters that are unintelligible and cannot be recovered. But even if you overwrite the data once or even twice the data can still be recovered. The Department of Defense’s policy on hard drive erasure is to overwrite at least three times. The National Security Agency (NSA) prefers to overwrite at least seven times! This makes sure the data is nearly impossible to recover. So what should you do? Ironically the technology to securely wipe your hard drive is already built in to your computer. Hard drive manufacturers started including a technology called Secure Erase in 2001 on all hard drives. Secure Erase is so effective that even the NSA uses the technology. Unfortunately the manufacturers of computer BIOS’s and the OS companies were not as forthcoming. The good news is you can take advantage of this technology. Read on…

You know the drill. You’ve decided to clean up your hard drive to free some space and in the process deleted some files that had some personal information in them. Maybe you had a text file that listed all your passwords and PIN numbers; or you had sensitive banking information in them. Whatever the case, you dragged the files or folders to the recycle bin and then forgot about it. Now you think that your information is deleted forever and will never be seen by anyone else ever again. WRONG ANSWER! In reality all you have done is erase a entry in the computer’s memory that points to the actual file location. You have not erased a single thing.

What? Your files and personal data are still on your computer’s hard drive? Absolutely! You, or anyone else for that matter, can download absolutely free software to recover those files. Let’s take a brief examination of the file-writing and erasing procedures for your computer to better help you understand just exactly what is going on.

When you write something on your hard drive you are writing in a series of 1’s and 0’s. This is called binary language. If you were to examine the hard drive under a microscope you won’t actually see these 1’s and 0’s but would see very tiny magnetic “rods” that are aligned by either north or south to represent the binary language. When you computer’s hard drive writes data it aligns these “rods” with either their north or south poles up to indicate 1’s and 0’s. I know, very technical stuff, but important to know. Read on…