Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 25

Thread: Am I right?

  1. #1

    Am I right?

    A friend of mine using a free Hotmail webmail account claims he found a computer expert that can find any Hotmail email on his computer even if it's been deleted a year ago. I told him this is hog malarky. Am I right?

    An edit note: the computer expert claims to be able to search on my friend's computer and find the deleted emails.

  2. #2
    Master-Jedi-Pimps0r & Moderator thehorse13's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2002
    Location
    Washington D.C. area
    Posts
    2,885
    The answer is, it depends.

    1) If the emails were cached/written to disk.
    2) If the HD sectors were overwritten (or not) enough times to allow recovery

    All he is doing is looking at HD sectors that have been flagged for overwrite. There is no magic here. If the HD has residual data, then sure, he can recover it. There are many tools that can do this.

    --TH13
    Our scars have the power to remind us that our past was real. -- Hannibal Lecter.
    Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. -- John Wooden

  3. #3
    Senior Member gore's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Michigan
    Posts
    7,177
    There is a chance he's right. When you log into hotmail it puts a cookie on your computer. I have apps here that allow me to find images I've viewed online months ago and if he has data recovery tools, he'd be able to find them long after they have been deleted.

    This is how Hackers sometimes get caught.They delete the files they took, but unless you overwrite that part of your HD like 50 times, someone can still dig it up long after it's been deleted.

  4. #4
    Okay, I see. Now I have some addtional questions:

    1. Would a hard drive cache a webmail account? Meaning this email was only ever accessed using the Internet.
    2. Would this work the same for a Mac computer? Or it doesn't matter?
    3. This guy does a lot of web and graphic design which uses a lot of hard drive space and it is possible his emails were overwritten long ago. Would this expert still be able to find something if it's overwritten?

    Did I mention this expert also charges a lot of dinero to find each deleted email?

    Just occurred to me...you guys make it sound like something my friend could do on his own...true?

  5. #5
    AO Curmudgeon rcgreen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Posts
    2,716
    I'm guessing that web mail is opened in the internet browser,
    and is therefore cached along with everything else. So, with
    default internet explorer settings, there's a good chance they are
    all there in the temporary internet files directory.

    It's also a fairly easy boast that I could find porn on your computer.
    If you have ever surfed to porn sites, the images are cached for
    a long time.
    I came in to the world with nothing. I still have most of it.

  6. #6
    Priapistic Monk KorpDeath's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Posts
    2,628
    Originally posted here by Thager

    Just occurred to me...you guys make it sound like something my friend could do on his own...true?
    Sure can if he's willing to spend the time and energy.
    Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
    - Samuel Johnson

  7. #7
    Master-Jedi-Pimps0r & Moderator thehorse13's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2002
    Location
    Washington D.C. area
    Posts
    2,885
    As I said earlier, the answer to everything here is, "It depends."

    Yes, it works the same for macs, linux, solaris, etc.

    Yes, your friend can DL a tool and get down to business in under 5 minutes.

    Depending upon how your host is configured, HD size, OS, etc. probabilities change on what can be recovered.

    In general, recovering deleted e-mail is trivial.

    --TH13
    Our scars have the power to remind us that our past was real. -- Hannibal Lecter.
    Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. -- John Wooden

  8. #8
    Junior Member zodiac's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Posts
    22
    I use Eraser, which is free :

    http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ease_id=407684

    If the link wraps, try http://tinyurl.com/qtcup

    The link to the developer's page : http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

    Features: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/features.php

    You just need to figure out which files/directories to wipe.
    Misery is not my friend, but I\'ll break before I bend.

  9. #9
    Senior Member gore's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Michigan
    Posts
    7,177
    That's not fool proof.

  10. #10
    Eraser's not foolproof?

    I went to the website and it looks like an amatuer like myself could really screw some things up if I'm not careful.

    What is foolproof? Since obviously you're dealing with (I don't want to call us fools) amatuers.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •