Daily Cup of Tech

They go by a lot of different names: history erasers, track eliminators, privacy cleaners, Internet eradicators. But, whatever you call them, their purpose is to remove all evidence of your “Internet indiscretions”. The big questions are, how well do they work and do they still leave some tracks behind?

These programs, which we will refer to as history erasers, claim to remove any trace of where you have been on the Internet and what you have been accessing on the Internet. These programs are typically marketed, quite aggressively in many instances, to people who, either accidentally or purposefully, accessed something on the Internet that they should not have.

This can be the teenager accessing adult content and is afraid her parents will discover what she has done. Or an employee who had an inappropriate pop-up appear on his computer screen while doing research for work. Maybe it is an online pedophile who is afraid that the police might somehow access his computer and discover evidence of his “hobby”. Or the concerned online bank customer worried about their password or credit card number that may be stored on their computer.

The truth is, these tools provide very limited protection against anyone who is looking for what you are doing on the Internet. They may stop someone who does not understand how the Internet or networks work but for someone who knows what they are doing, these provide very little in the way of “protection”. Following is a breakdown of what these tools can and can’t do for you.

What They Can Do

What most of these program will do is they will go into your system and delete all of the obvious things that the average user will see. The premise is that if you can’t find anything about where you have been, then nobody can find where you have been.

Most of these history erasers will:

• delete your history in your web browser
• remove temporary files from your internet cache
• remove dropdown and autocomplete entries from your web browser address bar
• delete all of your Internet cookies
• empty recycle bin
• delete temporary files
• delete recently viewed files
• delete multimedia application (e.g. Windows Media Player) histories and temporary files

These are the typical things that these tools will do. As you will see, this is just a small fraction of the “tracks” that you leave on the Internet.

What Many Don’t Do

Figure 1: File Table Indicating Where Data Resides On A Hard Drive

Figure 2: File Deleted. Notice Data Is Only “Hidden”

Figure 3: File Securely Deleted Data Is Actually Destroyed

One of the biggest holes that many of these tools leave is that they simply delete files or registry entries from the host computer. But, deleting a file is not good enough. Unless the history eraser securely deletes the file content and overwrites that content (often several times), the data is often still available.

Files sit on your hard drive in various locations. To make it easier for your system to find these files, there is a “table of contents” where these files are listed (see Figure 1). When these files are deleted, it is only the reference to these files in the file list and the pointer to these files which is deleted. The actual contents of the data is still intact (see Figure 2). Only by overwriting this data can you truly delete the contents of the file (see Figure 3).

Need proof? Here is a little test that you can do for yourself (Sorry, this only works on Windows but I am sure there is a freeware Mac OSX and Linux version out there. Feel free to list them in the comments if you know of these.). Follow these steps:

1. Download either Restoration or FreeUndelete
2. Install the application to your computer
3. Use the application to scan your c: drive
4. Stare at all of the “deleted” files that you can recover

Now, some of the “better” history erasers out there will securely delete your files so this does not apply to all of them. But, make certain that when you are deleting files that they are securely deleted.

If you are looking for a freeware program that will securely delete your files or that will scan through your deleted files on a regular basis, I would recommend using Eraser. I have had a lot of success with it in the past.

What They Can’t Do

When someone installs and uses these programs, what they believe they are buying is security. They are under the impression that if they use this software, nobody will be able to determine where they have been on the Internet. The simple fact of the matter is that this is completely false! And, there are a number of different things that can prevent you from properly “cleaning” your system. Here are some of the tracks that are left behind:

You Can’t Delete What You Can’t Access

Most office computers are provided by the IT department. Since the IT department is typically more technical than the average user, they will want to lock down certain aspects of the workstation. This can include the ability to delete files and change settings. It is possible for an IT administrator to remove the ability to delete Internet files or store them somewhere off your computer.

The same can be said for home computers. If your parents set up your computer and you do not have administrative access to the system, then the history erasers can be completely ineffective.

In general, you are at the mercy of the administrator of your computer.

Proxies Can Store Your Internet Sites

Many companies use proxy servers to help increase speeds to internet sites and information. They are also used to control internet access and monitor internet activity. If you have accessed information that you should not have, it is already too late to delete it because that information could very well have been recorded. It does not matter how much you clean your computer, the record of your transgression has already been recorded.

Routers Can Record Your Internet Destinations

It is relatively easy to set up even simple home routers and firewalls to transmit all network activity to a system that will monitor and log everything. Some of these are even available for free! Since all Internet traffic needs to go through these devices, it is impossible to use them and not have your information grabbed.

DNS Servers Can Save Your Addresses

DNS servers are used to convert your easy to remember website addresses into locations that the network can actually understand. Many of these servers cache the requests so that they can be used at later date and save time. But, they can also be used to determine where someone is going on the Internet.

Your ISP Can Track Your Internet Travels

I know that many internet providers offer a service to parents that will e-mail them each month with a complete list of all the websites that were visited from your internet connection. This is a really good way to check exactly what is happening on your system, even if someone tries to cover their tracks.

Websites Can Log Where You Come From and What You Accessed

It is amazing what a website owner can discover by looking through his web logs. Some of the things that a webmaster can track include:

• your IP address
• the city you reside in
• the website you came from
• how often you visit
• where you went after you left my site
• your operating system
• your web browser
• your internet provider
• your computer’s language settings

This means that if you went to that “naughty” website, chances are that there is a record of it on the webmaster’s server!

Conclusion

In my opinion, these programs are a huge waste of money. I think that the creators of these programs often use scare tactics to convince unknowing individuals to purchase their product. I believe that these utilities provide a false sense of security and do not come close to providing the privacy that they imply.

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