A Hard Lesson in Privacy

I just finished reading this interesting article in SecurityFocus by Scott Granneman called A Hard Lesson in Privacy . It is a true story about someone who bought a used Intel Mac. Basically is the same old story about people who think they deleted files by placing in the recycle bin and then emptying that recycle bin. Now for the “average” user they think that after you do that there is no way of recovering that information; well you are wrong. The only way you are able to delete files “forever” is with software that your Operating System does not bring (according to the article Mac securely deletes files). Considering that most user use Windows, it is a different story you will need special software that deletes your files and overwrites them so they can’t be recovered.

I will give you a quick lesson on how this works, it will probably not even make much sense but it is worth trying. There is one big column with rows,  these rows are “numbers” that indicate where your file is located, consider it like a street address. Next to that address (in the next column) is the information that it brings (the files information). There is another column with information about the adresses and saying if someone lives there (if it has something) or if it is empty. When you delete a file, it doesn’t really delete the information of the file, it just says in that other column that nothing is there (even though there really is, but it will be overwritten). It takes a “long” time to be overwritten because in the meanwhile it keeps using addresses that are really empty. So this information stays stored there but it is not directly viewable unless you use some recovering program. And this is how people get your old information. There is a lot of information on how storage and memory works on computer.  A little googling will help you find adequate software that will delete or scramble the information. Another way of keeping it safe is encrypting files so it could be extra secure. All of this might sound paranoid but when reality hits you and things like the story happen to you…. who is the paranoid now?

Yasser

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