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Spys In Cyberworld
By Kim Haas, Fri Dec 9th
Did you know your own computer is syping on you? Did you knowthat every click you make on your windows start menu is loggedto a hidden, encrypted database in your computer? It's very important that you read a site's privacy policy tofind out what information a web site gathers about you when youvisit and how they intend to use it. People ARE spying on you!! Companies are beginning to check thecontents of their employees computers after working hours. Haveyou been surfing and sending email during working hours? Wouldyour boss approve of this? If not, your job could be in jeopardy.
Think this sounds a bit outrageous? --- July 2000 --- FACT: 50 Workers At Dow Chemical Co.'sHeadquarters Site In Michigan were fired and another 200 wereDisciplined for distributing, downloading or saving picturesthat were either pornographic or violent in nature. FACT: Merck Fired Two Workers And Disciplined Several DozenOthers for what the Company called "Inappropriate Use Of TheInternet." FACT: Xerox Corporation, Fired 40 workers and The New York Timesterminated 23 employees at a Data Processing Center for similaroffenses. --- January 5, 2001 --- Leading Insurance Company Royal and SunAlliance sacked 10 people and suspended at least 77 over thedistribution of "Lewd" E-mails. Your computer keeps records of both your online and off-lineactivities. Everything you do is recorded. If you view webpages, movies or videos, play .wav or .midi files....it is allrecorded to your hard drive! Did you know that when you do asearch on the internet, this search information is recorded tohidden, encrypted files on your PC? Do you really know what'sbeen downloaded or hidden on your computer? Forensic analysis has become technologically superior in findingevidence of all sorts. They can remove your PC's hard drive anddiscover things about you that you probably didn't even know wasthere. Things you "thought" you deleted. You might think you'vecleaned out all your sensitive files, but the truth is, many ofthem are still there. Peter Constantine of Data Discoveryhttp://www.teleport.com/~peterc/ ) says that "....today'scomputers are "grabbing material and tucking it away in littlepigeonholes... The user has no idea that the data is out there." Digital Intelligence, Inc,http://www.digitalintel.com/freddie.htm ) has developedF.R.E.D.D.I.E. (F)orensic (R)ecovery of (E)vidence (D)evice(I)nterrogation (E)quipment which is portable and can be used ina crime scene (or any other time for that matter) to recoverdata from a multitude of electronic devices including, harddrives, CD's, Floppys, Zip drives and tape cartridges. Skeptical person that I am, I decided to do an experiment tofind out exactly HOW MUCH hidden stuff really was on mycomputer. If you are a Windows 95/98 user, try this experimentyourself. 1. Delete all your
files from your Windows 95/98 recycle binusing the standard 'Empty Recycle Bin' command. 2. Open yourbrowser and delete the history files and browser cache from yourpreferences/options menu. 3. Open Windows Explorer and rightclick on the drive letter you use for your main hard drive.Select "Properties" 4. Write down your drive's total Capacity,Used Space and Free Space; you'll need this later. 5. Downloadthe Evidence EliminatorT free trial program fromhttp://www.evidence-eliminator.com/go.shtml?A654789 6. Run theEvidence Eliminator(TM). 7. Repeat step 3 and compare how muchfree space is now available on your hard drive. Here's the results of my experiment: Total hard drive space 30,677,901,312 bytes (28.5GB) Available space before Evidence Eliminator: 26,893,676,544 bytesAvailable space AFTER Evidence Eliminator: 26,620,821,504 bytes Total reclaimed space: 272,855,040 bytes To translate, Evidence Eliminator(TM) removed over 260MB offiles from my computer! This isn't much for those of us who havemega-space on our hard drives, but for those with more limitedspace, 260MB is a lot! Here's some astonishing information I discovered about files onmy computer: 295 Windows Application logs were found. These logs storedinformation about what windows programs I've been using each day. There were almost 90 "components" discovered and removed thathad "installed themselves" to my computer without my knowledge! 271 Start Menu Recent Documents logs were removed. This heldinformation about what programs I had selected from my WindowsStart Menu. 3601 IE cache files were found AFTER I had cleared my IE cacheand history! 1960 IE cookies were removed. I had full control over whichcookies I kept and which ones I did not. 5636 Windows .TMP files were found that were NOT removed usingthe browser history delete options. Some of these files are theresult of extracting .zip files that were downloaded from theinternet, web pages I viewed off-line, .midi and .wav fileswhich downloaded during visits to web pages with backgroundmusic, etc. My experiment proved to me that there IS information about meand my computer usage habits that is stored on my computer whichtakes up valuable space, not to mention information I might notwant to ever be public knowledge. It's always a good idea tokeep your computer clean of unwanted files and protect yourprivacy at the same time. Are you aware of every single file on your computer? You shouldbe! Protect yourself from Cyber-Spys and regain control of whatinformation is stored on your PC. In this world of hightechnology, you never can tell when this information could befound and used.
About the author:Kim Haas is a WAHM and CEO of Womans-Net.com, a popular onlinenetworking community focusing on working from home and women inbusiness. Let us help you become the successful entrepreneur youwant to be. http://www.womans-net.com. To subscribe toWomans-Net News: subscribe@womans-net.com
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