The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
Wiping personal data from a computer
galenblade
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've recently acquired a new job, and will be moving on from the job I have shortly.
However, I want know what I should be doing to eliminate all personal info from my work computer before I move on. Mostly stuff that I accessed in Firefox, but that's largely easy (wipe cache, cookies, stored passwords, etc). Still, there's some things that still pop up automatically that I can't seem to get rid of - usernames, etc.
I used some stuff that required logins, like TweetDeck, and there are some files that show up in recent documents that I want to delete.
Is there a decent "clean sweep" program or the like I can use? Or a guide? Anything short of a format would do.
I only ask mainly because my company has no IT department to speak of, and some incredibly nosy people. I'd rest easier knowing that all my data's been removed.
However, I want know what I should be doing to eliminate all personal info from my work computer before I move on. Mostly stuff that I accessed in Firefox, but that's largely easy (wipe cache, cookies, stored passwords, etc). Still, there's some things that still pop up automatically that I can't seem to get rid of - usernames, etc.
I used some stuff that required logins, like TweetDeck, and there are some files that show up in recent documents that I want to delete.
Is there a decent "clean sweep" program or the like I can use? Or a guide? Anything short of a format would do.
I only ask mainly because my company has no IT department to speak of, and some incredibly nosy people. I'd rest easier knowing that all my data's been removed.
galenblade on
0
Posts
Make sure to check all the options under the Firefox tab in Ccleaner, and if you want to be extra careful go to the settings, and select "Secure delete" which makes an overwrite of where that data used to be, making it completely unrecoverable.
Have you uninstalled any programs that save those usernames in their folders and then made sure to delete and dumb those folders.
If there is a login for you on the computer you can goto system properties and then in the advanced tab then goto user profiles area and click the settings button there, you can nuke specific logins, and that will pretty much make it look like you never logged in. (Don't be logged into your profile when you delete your profile, do a local admin type deal)
Ccleaner looks optimum. I've already uninstalled all the programs that I remember that have personal data, but will see if I can nuke my main login as well.
Delete EVERYTHING you want gone. Clear cache, then go in and delete any remnants, clear temp directory and all of that.
Once you're absolutely certain that you've gotten everything and have emptied the recycle bin, do the following before you leave for the day and let it run overnight 'cause it just might take that long.
- Close all programs, even those that are in the system tray.
- Start>Run>"cmd"
- at the command prompt, type the following (make sure you don't have to touch the machine for ANY reason before you run this!!!)
c:\>cipher /W:c:
Lock the machine and go away for the night.
What this command does is nukes all space marked as free by the OS by first writing all 0's, then all 1's, then writing random numbers. Effectively, you make all deleted data unrecoverable in the same way that writing zeros to a drive does, except you do this without nuking the entire hard drive and with a running OS.
One note: The larger the drive, the longer this will take if there's lots of free space on it.
The cipher command is actually pretty neat.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315672
edit: which is not to say it isn't neat. I didn't know about that command.
This may be overkill to defend against his co-workers, sure- but them not being tech-savvy also means that they probably won't think to wipe the drive by doing overwrite passes if they ever get rid of it down the line.
If he's ever deleted anything that he wouldn't want a third-party to get hold of, doing overwrite passes on the deleted data is the only way to make sure it'll be gone for good. Even formatting the drive doesn't, by itself, ensure that the data is gone.
It may sound paranoid, but stranger things have happened than someone grabbing a hard drive they found in a dumpster or acquired as part of a company liquidation/corporate sale, and getting access to someone's accounts or personal/financial data. If seriously all that is on there is like, a twitter account password it might not be a huge deal, but beyond that it doesn't hurt to take the necessary precautions.
Twitter
I used to pick up hard drives from yard sales and university and city property sales. The sheer amount of data left on some of those drives was mind blowing. I picked up some used Zip250 disks from a school district sale once and there was all types of crap on those things! One purchase of an old CDRW had a burned CD with a My Documents folder and it's contents in it (scary stuff on that disc... scarred for life behind that one...). Hell, my wife's cousin found out that a friend of the family's son was gay because he had installed Red Hat on a slice of the family PC's drive and used it to cruise for guys. When they sold it to the cousin, they simply formatted the drive (I can only assume he used a boot floppy to access the linux partition) and reinstalled windows. When she started having issues with the drive, I pulled it and dropped it in a USB enclosure to back up her data but noticed 3 small ext2 partitions on the drive (I have EXT2 read/write setup in XP). A quick perusal of the partitions revealed a shit ton of gay porn pics, plus a number of them of one guy taking pics in a mirror and webcam pics. I showed them to the cousin and she freaked! "That's Bobby!!! What the fuck is this???!!!". I told her this was all stuff on her hard drive, and she told me that this guy was her friend's son who always kept women around him and had plenty of girlfriends. Apparently he led a double-life and didn't count on anyone finding his "special" partition. She never told the family, better to let that secret come out on it's own.
Granted, the vast majority of people out there probably believe that if you simply format a drive, then it's former contents are no longer there so that's typically all they do before selling off an old PC.
I'm handling the sale/recycling of an old PC for my folks, so that is handy to have.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Great stories, thanks for taking the time to write them.
I have a SCSI drive sadly in perfectly good condition, just when I upgraded PCs I didn't get a controller for it. When I finally dump everything I no longer use, I'll rip the thing apart and keep the platters. Or maybe find a cheap SCSI 160 controller on ebay or something. Either way I would never think to sell it unless I spent a good 48 hours scrambling up the drive.
if you just want to do a complete nuke, then reinstall Windows from scratch (which is what I do when I'm selling off a machine) have a look at Darik's Boot And Nuke (www.dban.org/ , also included on the Ultimate Boot Disc) or HDDGURU (hddguru.com). Between the two, HDDGURU is far faster and runs under Windows (especially handy for using a drive connected via USB), but IIRC, Darik's is more thorough and can do a 3 pass nuke... It just takes FOREVER!!! To give you an example, I nuked a 60GB drive on an old laptop before turning it in at the office. It took 38 hours!!! HDDGURU wiped a 160GB drive in a few hours, allowing me to do it three times in an afternoon.
Adaptec SCSI controllers have low-level format utilities built into the card bios. I used to use it a lot when I ran SCSI.