getting erased data

[Sacofjoea]

I was watching this show on TV, and it telled how this guy wrote in his computer, somewhat of a diary, and deleted all of the info. The cops later came by to check it out, and with some software, and computer knowledge, they got parts of the information back, how did they do this? They said how when you delete a file (FULL DELETION), it deletes most of it, but the information is still there, somewhere....They sxplained it like each new piece of information is like a piece of paper being stacked over each other...

How did they recover the info?

Ok on computers if you delete data, you ain't actually destroying it. What you are telling the Fat table is to tag these areas of disk for deletion. The OS will then allow new data to be written to the areas of disk that are tagged for deletion, or on defragging to clean up that area of desk.

You can use Norton Utilities to untagged data, thereby seemingly getting it back from oblivion.

Good example is most mdbs. If you delete a record, you are tagging that record for deletion, thereby it doesn't show up in reports etc. Caren't remember the command, but there is one in vb for viewing deleted records, coz they are still on the database. If you zap or compress the database then the record is canned.

Unix and Pick work in the same way

[Nitro]

For example, if you want to delete a JPG file for good, write a program which would do the following:

• change the extension of the file to txt
• open the file
• delete all the contents
• Write some bogus data into the file
• save and close it
• change it back to the original name
• delete the file

Here is a sample I wrote in Excel VBA:

Sub pDeleteIt()
'PURPOSE:                       WARNING!!!!!
'         The following procedure will delete all files permenantly
    
  Dim intY As Integer
  Dim strDelFile As String

  Dim strDir As String
  strDir = fGetFilesInDirectory()
  
  'PURPOSE: Make sure you want to delete
  If MsgBox("Activate Delete Process?", vbYesNo, "***** WARNING! *****") = vbNo Then End
  
  Do Until ActiveCell.Value = ""
      'PURPOSE:Increase the serial number
      intY = intY + 1
      strDelFile = "Del" & intY & ".txt"
      ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Value = strDelFile
      
      'PURPOSE:Rename to a text file
      Name strDir & ActiveCell.Value As strDir & strDelFile
      
      'PURPOSE:Write Bogus Info
      DoEvents
      Open strDir & strDelFile For Output As #1
      Print #1, "Confidential"
      Close #1
      
      'PURPOSE:Rename text file back to what it was
      Name strDir & strDelFile As strDir & ActiveCell.Value
      
      'PURPOSE:Delete File
      Kill strDir & ActiveCell.Value
  
      ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
  Loop
  
  Range("a1").Select
End Sub

[noone]

Everyone should have PGP: http://www.pgp.com/
In addition to secure encryption it also allows you to securly wipe files, and it allows you to set how many times it should overwrite the file when you securly wipe it.
It used to be freeware I'm not sure if it still is or not.