How To "Erase" Your Digital Footprint..! [Archive] - The Project Avalon Community Forum

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jackovesk

12th November 2011, 06:55

Friday, 11 November 2011

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u139222/digitalfootprint-teas.jpg

Think about all the things you’ve used your Internet for in the past 24 hours. You’ve probably checked your email, updated your Facebook status, paid some bills through online banking, read up on the latest news, and took the time before bed to video chat with a far-flung childhood friend. Even after logging out and turning off your computer, the information you’ve just accessed or created continues to wander the great plains of the World Wide Web. This information that we leave behind about ourselves on a daily basis is known as our digital footprint.

Like stepping in wet concrete, these trails we unwittingly leave behind can be tough to erase. With the rise of identity theft, corporate tracking, and the ability of “Big Brother” to access our private data, it is more important than ever for Internet users to be aware of how past and future data can be erased and controlled more effectively.

How Big is My Footprint?
To truly understand just how big your digital footprint is, there are several tools available that can be easily accessed and added to your computer for constant monitoring and control.

Google is one of the most commonly accused mediums for collecting our data, and rightfully so. That ad that just popped up on your GMail page for cookbooks does indeed have something to do with your search for a killer Spam recipe for last Sunday’s tailgate party.

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u139222/digitalfootprint-googlealarm.jpg

On a daily basis Google pings your browser for information about browsing history, allowing the search giant to improve their search algorithms and target advertising. Interested in seeing just how often this is happening? Download the free software offering Google Alarm, created by F.A.T. Labs, which is available for both Firefox and Chrome browsers. This add-on will notify you each time you are sending data to Google. Just make sure you disable the sound option for this. I jumped out of my chair the first time the (very loud) alarm went off, and kept going off almost every time I visited a new site. Unless you have a serious love for air horns or are trying to induce a heart attack don’t forget to do this!

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u112496/google_alarm_footprint.png

Another way to measure your digital footprint is to see how much advertising companies have been allowed to track your browsing habits. “But I never gave any companies permission to know about sites I visit” you insist. The sad reality is that simply visiting certain sites allows advertising companies to place what are known as “tracking cookies” on your computer. Cookies are small chunks of data created by web servers that are delivered through a web browser and stored on your computer. They allow websites that you often frequent to keep track of your online patterns and preferences, creating a personalized experience.

Leading the fight to raise awareness and provide solutions to this issue is the Network Advertising Initiative, a coalition of cooperative of online marketing and analytics companies committed to “building consumer awareness and establishing responsible business and data management practices and standards.”

According to the NAI, “Most of the advertising online today is provided by 3rd party ad networks. These networks use tools such as cookies to track your Web preferences and usage patterns in order to tailor advertising content to your interests. What you may not realize is that information gathered at one website may be used to direct ad content at another site.”

To combat this, the NAI has created a service that scans your computer to identify those member companies that have placed an advertising cookie file on your computer. The results from running this simple diagnostic can be eye-opening about how much your internet habits are being monitored.

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u112496/emc_digital_footprint_calculator_footprint.png

Another method of obtaining a simple estimate about your digital footprint is by using the Digital Footprint Calculator, provided as a service from the EMC Corporation. The software download, which is available for both Windows and Mac, measures user input about the frequency of emails, photo and video uploads, phone usage, web browsing, and where in the world you live. After submitting your estimates, the calculator will provide you with an actual file size of your presence on the Internet. The software also ironically provides an option of creating a ticker widget to share your results on a web page, thus expanding your footprint in the process.

Looking for a quick way to determining digital shoe size? Write down every site on the Internet you have created a user account for. Sound impossible? For most of us, we have cast such a wide personal net across the web, that it is insurmountable to go back and accurately pinpoint where we’ve left information about ourselves. Attempting to complete this exercise may bring on the realization that caging the Internet beast that is your personal information is next to impossible, and for the most part, it is. Fortunately, there are organizations and free software offerings that can help you bring your data monster into submission.

Erasing Your Digital Footprint...

Now that you’ve had the chance to measure just how big your footprint is, what steps can be taken to try and erase it? Let’s start with cookies.

A simple way to ensure safe browsing without a trail is to make sure you are cleaning out your cache of cookies on your computer. Accessing the preferences option in any browser and clicking the “delete cookies” option can easily do this. A word of warning though: those users who enjoy auto-login and personal customization and personalization of sites you frequent will be deleted.

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u112496/ccleaner_footprint.png

If you would like a more thorough method of cleaning up cookies, as well as Internet history and other tracking tools, there are free options available. A popular software offering (and a MaximumPC favorite) (http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/pc_prescriptions_21_free_apps_keep_your_pc_healthy?page=0,2) for Windows users is CCleaner (http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER). CCleaner, which is available as a free download or pay version (if you want technical support included), cleans all Internet history, cookies, auto-complete forms, and index files from your computer. Supported browsers include IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari.

Another option to clean cookies on your computer, particularly flash cookies, is a freeware program called Flash Cookie Cleaner (http://www.flashcookiecleaner.com/download/). Flash cookies are simply cookies created by Adobe Flash plug-ins on websites that perform the same snooping tasks as regular cookies. Flash Cookie Cleaner works to eliminate these files, but also contains options to save cookies to sites you trust and wish to keep information on.

Another easy way to erase your digital footprint is to make sure you are deleting accounts to websites you no longer frequent. Sites can often employ difficult account cancellation practices, which can discourage users from going through the trouble. Smashing Magazine writer Cameron Chapman has compiled an excellent article on how to delete your account from popular websites. This can be one of the quickest ways to erase your personal data, making it unavailable to be used by one company or sold to another. Still have your Friendster, MySpace, or Bebo account active? That data is still available for others to see!

http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u139222/digitalfootprint-reputation.jpg

Erasing personal information that has already been made public on the web should be the next step in your clean-out process. Do a basic search of your name on sites such as Spoke, Intelius and WhitePages to pull up what the rest of the world sees about you. From there, it becomes a tedious (but worthwhile) process of filling out online forms and making phone calls with these services to limit or remove your personal information from company databases. For more information on public data companies to check and how to remove your information from them, check out this article from Gizmodo writer Kelly Hodgkins.

If drastic measures are needed to erase your information, companies are ready and waiting to “wash out” your digital footprint: for a price. Reputation.com offers a suite of paid services to protect, promote, and defend their customers’ personal data online. Their tagline?

“Scammers, stalkers and identity thieves prey on private data. Equally harmful are things we call negative content — a bad review of your business, a nasty comment on Facebook, an article about something from your past that’s simply irrelevant now — that could damage your personal life or your livelihood. We can help.”

If an absolute face lift or dramatic reduction of your online information is needed, pay services such as this may be your quickest way to a smaller digital shoe size.

More here (http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/how_erase_your_digital_footprint?page=0,1)

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1354/187/How_To_Erase_Your_Digital_Footprint.html?currentSplittedPage=0

ViralSpiral

12th November 2011, 07:13

Thank you for this most helpful thread Jacko. I did want to add that, with all the billions of people on this lonely planet and with no propensity to build atomic weapons or create a radical upheavel, I remain a pimple on their bums. I am only too happy for them to know that I look for them too!!! ;)

Besides,I found this rather amusing.... was looking up on Wiki (yep, tag that beeg brudda), the world population:

World population
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World population estimates from 1800 to 2100, based on UN 2004 projections and US Census Bureau historical estimates .

The world population is the total number of living humans on the planet Earth. As of today, it is estimated to be 6.974 billion by the United States Census Bureau.[1] According to a separate estimate by the United Nations, it has already exceeded 7 billion.[2][3][4] The world population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Great Famine and Black Death in 1350, when it stood at around 370 million.[5] The highest rates of growth—increases above 1.8% per year—were seen briefly during the 1950s, and for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s. The growth rate peaked at 2.2% in 1963, and had declined to 1.1% by 2009. Annual births peaked at 173 million in the late 1990s, and are now expected to remain constant at their 2011 level of 134 million, while deaths number 56 million per year, and are expected to increase to 80 million per year by 2040.[6] Current projections show a continued increase in population (but a steady decline in the population growth rate), with the global population expected to reach between 7.5 and 10.5 billion by 2050.[7][8][9]

Where can I look up aliens?

/cough

vibrations

12th November 2011, 08:05

This is just awesome Jacko. Thank you very much.

Maria Stade

12th November 2011, 08:35

I have had CC cleaner over a year now and it is a great tool !
Thank you jackovesk for all the fine things you bring to our attention !

wolf_rt

12th November 2011, 12:45

Im no expert, but you can't 'get rid' of anything you've put on the net, it will always be on some mirror or something somewhere...

You can hide it from a casual search though.

Try running firefox with cookies set to 'always ask', and the 'No Script' and 'AdBlock Plus' plugin.

This will hand you back most of the control on what is going in and out.

A very long way from anonymous or secure though.... There is no truly anonymous internet (without going to ridiculous extremes), and NOTHING is secure.

taurad

12th November 2011, 13:27

use the Opera browser, configure it properly to never save browsing data (it also offers a Private Tab/Window for anonymity), use the CCleaner daily and good luck...

forget about the IE

cheers

wolf_rt

12th November 2011, 13:40

percival tyro

12th November 2011, 15:24

Thanks Jackovesc for your hard work towards my easy application.

STATIC

12th November 2011, 16:04

I use another program called peerblock which blocks the majority of websites from logging your IP or communicating with your pc.
If you use Facebook... You can download an extension for google chrome called Facebook disconnect. This does the same thing as beerblock but it's just for facebook.
Yes it is hard to control the info that is taken without your consent, but there is a lot that you can do to minimize your trail.
If you want really be online without being tracked, you can use a proxy server.

taurad

13th November 2011, 01:29

it also offers a Private Tab/Window for anonymity

There is NO anonymity, even if you are a super hacker, and you routed it through a base on mars..... NO anonymity

seriously... there are 10,000's of people on the planet who could look at one forum post or whatever, and have your name, ph#, address, licence/id/passport#'s, and tell you what you ate for lunch, and that your gas bill is overdue, in about 10 minutes.....

NO anonymity and NO security on the net....EVER. Period... just the way it is...

take it easy, relax, breathe twice...

i never said it's the ultimate solution, far from it, actually impossible, since every bit of info coming to you, goes through your ISP first, every record can be traced...

i was talking about simple steps for simple garbage removal...because the task to invisibly cloak the house is impossible to achieve, it doesn't mean you have to leave all doors, every window and knock the front gate down...hope you agree to this at least

cheers

ThePythonicCow

13th November 2011, 01:44

NO anonymity and NO security on the net....EVER. Period... just the way it is...
In my view, that is an overly broad statement.

That statement seems to say that No information on the web is Ever secure from Anyone.

Rather I would say that Most information on the web is Usually accessible to Some others.

But if you know what you're doing, information can be and is transferred across the web without any unintended party reading it, unless you're a person of sufficiently special interest that you are being intensively spied on, including black bag physical bugging, unknown body implants and/or mind control.

I am nearly certain that I successfully transfer information across the web daily without any unauthorized viewers, and that I have been doing so for years. But I'm pretty sure that I know what I'm doing.

kathymarie

13th November 2011, 01:47

Another great post, J.....great information......disconcerting but helpful!

mosquito

13th November 2011, 04:11

By far the best tool is CyberScrub Privacy Suite, as far as I know it's the only software package which overwrites unused disk space 7 times, in order to prevent forensic recovery of data.

wolf_rt

13th November 2011, 11:00

taurad

13th November 2011, 13:10

By far the best tool is CyberScrub Privacy Suite, as far as I know it's the only software package which overwrites unused disk space 7 times, in order to prevent forensic recovery of data.

it's true that using smart overwriting/zeroing/erasing data is the way to go...it also poses the risk of data recovery, when needed thou...

best thing to do is keep sensitive data in different partitions, better offline disks all together...then you can clean/scrub by using sophisticated encryption erasing methods in the OS partition/drive...a combination of internet+intranet is best as can be...

cheers

Mad Hatter

13th November 2011, 16:44

Computer security rule number one... don'y buy one.
Computer security rule number two... if you do buy one, don't turn it on.

Of course if you really want a collection of red flags against your name... research how to use a 'One time pad'.

Should tie up an acre or three of the NSA's supercomputers for more than a little while but be prepared for a visit from the MIB who will be really annoyed at the cost of deciphering a simple shopping list. :p

Now if we all did this all the time...

ThePythonicCow

13th November 2011, 16:46

But if you know what you're doing, information can be and is transferred across the web without any unintended party reading it, unless you're a person of sufficiently special interest that you are being intensively spied on, including black bag physical bugging, unknown body implants and/or mind control.

Transferring any sort of encrypted files that the NSA's computers can't automatically decode and read, is a certain way to make yourself such a person of interest.

Technically - no, sending strongly encrypted files is not a way to make me a person of sufficiently special interest that I am likely being intensively spied on. It might make me a person of "a little" interest, but not of sufficient interest to send out Men in Black to personally spy on me. This is so, because there are not enough Men in Black to personally spy on all those who transfer information across the Internet using high grade encryption.

At some point, the NSA might like us to think that using strong encryption automatically draws the personal attention of NSA spies, but that can just be a ruse, to get us to abandon efforts to use strong encryption.

That statement seems to say that No information on the web is Ever secure from Anyone.

That's what i was going for...
Then we disagree. OK.

Not to say it would be easy to do, i am no hacker, but i suspect there are many 1000's of people who probably would find it very easy to for instance, read your secured communications, if they really wanted to...

The NSA has 100's of ACRES of supercomputers that do nothing but try to read every communication on the net. what transmissions do you think they start with? my bet is on anything that is encrypted/secured.

please remember that ANYTHING you do on the net CAN be monitored/decrypted/rerouted/etc...

I am familiar with the sort of big computers that NSA likely uses; they were quite possibly a customer of the computer company for which I worked, developing the software to run on such big iron.

I am familiar with encryption software; I've worked on such (in a minor capacity, not an original developer) and I have used and paid some attention to encryption mathematics and software for decades.

I am familiar with the mathematics behind high grade encryption; One of my degrees is in mathematics.

To be clear, I'm saying that most of the people transferring well encrypted information over the Internet do so "successfully", without actually having their information read by unauthorized parties, due to brute force decryption.

It can be misleading to focus on brute force crypto attacks using the NSA's acres of computers. Most data "leakage" is not via brute force attacks on high grade encrypted data, but via other means such as loose lips, social engineering, and where necessary "Men in Black". And most of the computer, networking and storage capacity of the NSA is not focused on brute force decryption of strongly encrypted data, but rather on managing and mining the torrent of more easily read data they can see on the Internet and from other sources.

At some point, the NSA might like us to think that encryption is "hopeless" ... but that can just be a ruse, to get us to abandon efforts to use it correctly, thereby making us more vulnerable to being watched by "other means".

===

So ... which is it:

using strong encryption they can't automatically decrypt will surely bring down the Men in Black to personally spy on us, or
there is no sense trying to use strong encryption because their acres of computers can automatically decrypt anything?

Sorry for the long post ... but a good understanding of this can actually be useful, in my view, to keeping your data out of the wrong hands.

Flash

13th November 2011, 17:33

I love these kind of long posts Paul. Thanks, very usefull and intelligent as well. It demystifies what NSA intents are and their capacities as well.

taurad

13th November 2011, 17:53

Continuing where Mad Hatter left off:

rule nr. 3

if you're still alive and browsing, there's a 88% chance that your data means nada to "them"

keep doing what your doing... you're fine

cheers

1159

13th November 2011, 18:08

Many people believe that digital file shredders will erase their tracks and data on their computer. Here is a little know fact we all need to be aware of; Every single bit of data your computer has read is permanantly recorded on your hard drive It make no difference if you erase it, scamble it or shred it digitally, it will never be erased. It becomes permanatly etched into the electromagnetic record of the hard drive.

For the ordinary user and computer hacker, shredded data is not recoverable, but this is only the superficial level of deletion. A phorensic scientist can easily find and recover this data, if they really want to, even if you totally reformat the hard drive! The only way to remove all data is to take a blow torch, or acid to the hard drive. Physically destroy it in the most destructive way possible.

Never discard your computer without removing the hard drive and performing a personal and brutal assasination on the hard drive. Even a hammer to smash the drive to pieces will work.

Please remember, the digital footprint is NEVER removed completely. Most people never bother to try to recover data in deeply scrambled or encrypted structures, but it can be done if an expert really wants to find your stuff.

So that raises an interesting question on security when using other peoples servers, such as forums, social networks and the like. Webmasters all assure you that your data is safe and never shared. Not true. In the USA there are legal rights to interrogate any server hard drive if a government agency deems this to be required in the interest of national security and interests. In addition, sharing data on cloud servers only means it gets distributed across a network of servers.

Be aware that the internet is a free for all of shared data If you post anything to internet servers, you may as well accept that if push comes to shove, it can be found and read by other people.

ThePythonicCow

13th November 2011, 19:00

Every single bit of data your computer has read is permanantly recorded on your hard drive It make no difference if you erase it, scamble it or shred it digitally, it will never be erased. It becomes permanatly etched into the electromagnetic record of the hard drive.
No.

Just formatting the drive won't usually overwrite all the data on it.

But using any of a variety of disk scrubbing tools that overwrite all data bytes on a disk several times, with various patterns, will, for almost all practical purposes, make that data entirely unrecoverable.

Only very high levels of security recommend using a combination of (1) data scrubbing, (2) chemical etching, then (3) physical destruction.

A Google search for "disk scrubbing secure delete" (https://www.google.com/search?q=disk+scrubbing+secure+delete) will find a variety of scrubbing programs and related information. Such programs do work.

Data is not "etched" into an electromagnetic disk, but recorded by flipping the polarity of (very small) magnetized regions.

wolf_rt

14th November 2011, 06:55

So ... which is it:

using strong encryption they can't automatically decrypt will surely bring down the Men in Black to personally spy on us, or
there is no sense trying to use strong encryption because their acres of computers can automatically decrypt anything?

Sorry for the long post ... but a good understanding of this can actually be useful, in my view, to keeping your data out of the wrong hands.

Not at all, thanks for the insight.

I understand what you're saying, but not being bothered to look is different to secure.

Do you believe any encryption available to the average person today would really tie up a meaningful amount of resources? Serous question... i'm thinking of fuzzy logic, AI, 10 generation ahead supercomputers when i think of this stuff....

and surely any encryption relies on a key which must be shared among the parties securely?

And encryption isn't really the problem...

Do you believe that, for instance, this post on the forum, is in anyway secure or anonymous? I realise that that is mostly due to my sloppiness, but i do not believe any amount of money or effort could successfully restore my online anonymity?

Thanks for your time with this, its an interesting subject.

As i said i'm no IT expert, so i have always run under the assumption that whatever i do on the net is public, including credit card no's ect.... I think of it as a trust based system.

ThePythonicCow

14th November 2011, 08:28

Do you believe any encryption available to the average person today would really tie up a meaningful amount of resources? Serous question... i'm thinking of fuzzy logic, AI, 10 generation ahead supercomputers when i think of this stuff....
Yes.

The best widely available encryption at present would be 256-bit AES using a full 14 rounds (AES-256).

A brute force attack on AES-256 would take 2 ** 256 operations (I am using ** for the exponent operator.) The best known attack is slightly better than brute force, taking 2 ** 254.4 operations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard).

With that, a one million (10**6) CPU system, able to perform 1 such operation (trying one key, which is really thousands of CPU cycles on a conventional CPU) every femtosecond (10**-12 seconds, nearly a million times faster than typical computers) would take approximately 2**254.4 / ( 10**6 * 10**12 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365.24) == 1.2 * 10 ** 51 == 1210427606910615141811960946240356055958668548505600 years to break one cipher text.

and surely any encryption relies on a key which must be shared among the parties securely?

Public key encryption such as RSA does not use shared private keys. Typically a one-time use RSA public key is generated, and then used to exchange the AES (or other) private key. So far as we know, breaking RSA is about as hard as factoring large primes. The current best known example of breaking RSA took 100's of computers a couple years to break RSA-768, between 2007 and 2009. It is thus recommended to use RSA-1024 for short term needs, and RSA-2048 for strong public key encryption. The RSA implementation used by ssh on my present system (part of the standard Ubuntu distribution) can use up to RSA-16384. Breaking that with all the compute power on this planet at the moment would I'm confident take longer than the known (by conventional cosmology) life of the universe, however off hand I don't see how to calculate precisely how long it would take.

However ... my favorite use of encryption (outside of the usual such as https, ssh, ...) is to email an encrypted file to myself, containing some important account passwords. For this use, I do not need to share a private key with anyone :). So the above ginormous number of years applies directly, if I use AES-256.

As i said i'm no IT expert, so i have always run under the assumption that whatever i do on the net is public, including credit card no's ect.... I think of it as a trust based system.
Indeed. You are trusting that any bank or store that has your credit card number will not misuse it. That is not an encryption problem.

I am even trusting some crypto software writers when I use strong encryption to email my passwords to myself.

Jay

5th December 2011, 07:00

Creepy - but your data is most likely handed over long before you can erase it anyway http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/president/multimedia/photos/images/photos/p-018973-00-57h.jpg

whenyournex2me

5th December 2011, 09:14

wow, I gotta get my stuff together....

araucaria

5th December 2011, 09:48

take it easy guys, doesn't all this stuff go into the Akashic records anyway? :)