History Erasers?

[Surf]

Can I get the same results using my computers maintenance tools that I could get using a downloaded history eraser? I have Windows XP. Thanks!

[dublix]

I don't believe so, unless your in linux. I think those more or less just delete it the same way the recycle bin would.

[nihil]

Right!

You have not mentioned your operating system....you really should have done

But it does not matter..........a specific erasing tool will beat anything in any OS that I have seen.

But I could still recover the data

Good luck

[D0pp139an93r]

Yes and No.... There is nothing that the fancy history erasers can do that you can't do on your own so to speak. The question is whether you know what histories to delete and how to delete them.... Plus, your computer doesn't have any tools to destroy a file, when you delete something, it's just removed form the allocation table(s). If you are really paranoid about it, you need to get a utility to overwrite the file several times. Utilities like these should be found on www.download.com

[nihil]

Please look at:
http://www.x9000.net/

It is called "Xen"...........be careful...I would not mess with fonts and sounds.

And I will still get ya
Cheers

[groovicus]

I did an experiment with some of those free space "wiping" utilities a while back, including a military strength application... I was still able to recover the files. And that was on a Windows XP box. I haven't tried them with any other OS, so I don't know if that is an XP issue or not.

Even with applications that supposedly "shredded" the file when deleted, I was still able to recover the data.

Also, depending on what history eraser was used, they still left traces of activity..most often in the registry. The long and short of it is that they will prevent the average user from recovering your data, but a person who knows how to use a search engine will be able to find the freeware tools necessary to recover the data.

My experiments were hardly scientific though, but they showed me that any kind of software that claims to "erase your tracks" are making inflated claims.

[D0pp139an93r]

There are certain "eraser" programs that work fairly well, I just can't remember right now what they're called. If the space can be overwritten randomly at least 40-50 times, the files are generally unrecoverable as far as I know. I'm not sure if NTFS is an issue though... Don't know much about it. I use an encrypted Reiser FS.


EDIT: Of course the claims are inflated. MS says Outlook is secure, Oracle said... Well y'all get the point. It's how the software industry works.

[dspeidel]

I found windows wipper to be a good erase program. It modified index.dat (which is a history file that you cannot delete when windows is running and is not cleaned via tools->options->clear history) and wipped out all other history files. Upon further experimentation I discovered that you can manualy modifiy index.dat (you can replace chars but you cannot make the files size change) however when the file gets large it is painful to hand modify it and you must finish once you start.

The above only addresses w2k. Have not experimented on XP. I have not attempted to recover the deleted history after running the tool but since it replaces the content of the file and does not erase it I think it would be difficult to recover.

Cheers,

-D

[groovicus]

I found windows wipper to be a good erase program

Ok, pardon me for asking a stupid question. How can you make that claim if you have never tried to recover the data? (I'm not trying to bust your chops) It overwrites the Index.dat file.... but there are many other places where data is stored, and I have yet to find an application that gets them all. I have not tested every one on the market, and there may very well be one that does, but I have my doubts.

I did test windows wiper on XP, and the data is still recoverable, and quite easily with the proper applications. I did a short tutorial on windows forensics (mostly geared towards XP).

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=251428 Try out some of the tools listed and let us know what you find. I don't have W2k, so I would be curious as to how it goes.