Security and Privacy

As convenient as email is, many people don’t understand that emails typically are in “clear text,” meaning that your messages could be intercepted as they move from server to server on their way to your intended recipient. In this age of identity theft, this can be very risky. For example, if you’re emailing sensitive information like financial statements, a bad person could steal your information. Once in the wrong hands, they could create a real headache for you.

Fortunately, it is not difficult to protect yourself from this scenario. You can encrypt your email, that is, encode your messages (and attachments) to protect them from being intercepted, using a combination of a Gmail account and GnuPG, plus some additional software. GnuPG makes the process work through the use of public and private key pairs. More >

Photo by j. towbin

In our last post, we took a look at CCleaner as a way to automate the secure deletion of much of the “stuff” your computer accumulates as a result of browsing, editing documents, as well as files that Windows itself generates in day-to-day operation.

What if you want to securely erase or securely move specific files? The free utility Eraser from Heidi Computers Ltd. does just that. Let’s define what we mean.

By “secure,” we mean that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to recover files deleted using the methods that CCleaner and Eraser can be configured to use. Basically, configuring these utilities to use the US DoD 5220.22-M method will overwrite the area a file occupies on a hard drive with 3 passes of random data (not just overwriting with all “0′s” or all “1′s”). A person attempting to recover that file later would not know how “undelete” that file. If you like, you may configure Eraser to use the Guttman method, which overwrites a file 35 times. More >