I am looking to purchase a hard drive cleaning utility such that I can
selectively permanently erase sensitive information from my hard
drive, specifically passwords and bank account numbers, such that they
can never be stolen, even by the most sophisticated person who may
even have physical possession of my computer.
This new question is an offshoot of a previous question.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=608006
So the question is: What is the best retail product I should buy?
(The best one I found at Office Depot looked like Wincleaner, but I
have the feeling there are better products out there.)

---

Request for Question Clarification by efn-ga on 24 Dec 2005 00:02 PST

Hi onepawnleft,

A couple of questions:

First, do you know where the information you want to erase is?  There
are two different kinds of functions in disk cleaner software.  A
program may do one or the other or both.  One function is finding
files that the user may or may not know about, such as browser cookie
or cache files, and deleting those files in the usual way.  The other
function is deleting specified files so that they cannot be recovered,
or "sanitizing" or "shredding" unused disk space that used to contain
files so that the files cannot be recovered.  It sounds like you want
at least the second of these, which is why I asked about the first.

Second, some of us are hesitant to answer questions about the "best"
of anything, because the judgment is often subjective, and you may not
like what a researcher thinks is best.  Also, we are not supposed to
recommend or endorse products or services anyway, though this policy
has not been strictly enforced.

The second function of making a file unrecoverable is not technically
very difficult, so if that is all you need, the differences between
products are likely to relate to cost and ease of use, rather than
quality of erasure.  So if you can specify what attributes are
important to you and accept pointers to a number of products, probably
someone can help you.  It might also help if you specify what
operating system you are using, since a useful tool might come with
the operating system.

--efn

---

Clarification of Question by onepawnleft-ga on 26 Dec 2005 12:52 PST

Thank you efn, here goes:
(BTW I think your making my question sound a lot more complicated than it is)
1. My first priority is that my neighborhood computer repair shop
can't steal my passwords and financial institution data off the hard
drive when I bring it in and leave it with them.
2. I have no idea where the information is stored on my computer is,
nor do I want to.
3. "Best" This is not a competition, I just need some help and
direction in finding a product or group of products that I can
purchase to solve my problem.
4. Ease of use would be an important consideration.  Low cost vs. high
cost is always nice.
5. I am running Windows 2000, but will soon be running XP Pro; if
necessary I can wait for my XP Pro.
TIA.

I believe your answer 2 makes this question difficult, if not
impossible.  There isn't a standard place for storing secret
information, so if you don't know where it is, the only reasonable
solutions involve doing something to the whole disk, which doesn't
meet your requirement that the process be selective.  You could
encrypt the whole disk and use it that way all the time, or you could
encrypt it before you turn the computer over to someone else and
decrypt it when you get it back.  Another approach would be to make a
copy of the disk, wipe it out and hand it over, and then restore it
when you get it back.

I also think the comments you got on your previous question may have
been a bit hasty.  Your passwords do not have to be stored in your
computer for you to access Internet services with them.  If you keep
them in your head or on a piece of paper and the services you use are
properly designed for security, the passwords won't be there on the
computer for anyone to steal.

The simplest solutions might be either to find a repair shop you trust
or to remove the disk drive before taking the computer for repair. 
(This, of course, won't work if you're seeking help with a problem
that involves data or software on the disk.)

"I also think the comments you got on your previous question may have
been a bit hasty.  Your passwords do not have to be stored in your
computer for you to access Internet services with them.  If you keep
them in your head or on a piece of paper and the services you use are
properly designed for security, the passwords won't be there on the
computer for anyone to steal."
Well, you may be right.  In my previous question, I did not mean I was
so dumb as to actually write down and save my secret passwords.  They
are in my head.  I meant when I log onto Wells Fargo Online banking
and type in my account number and my secret password, is that
information saved on my hard drive without me knowing, and can a
computer expert then retrieve it?

I can't say for sure whether your account number and password are
saved on your hard drive, but at least I can say that they are not
necessarily stored there.  For your convenience, either the website or
your browser might save your password on your disk so you don't have
to type it in every time, but if this is happening, you should know
about it:  the software should have asked you at some time if you
wanted this service, and once you agreed, you should be able to skip
entering the data.  If these things have not happened, and the website
is reasonably well-designed, which I would expect of Wells Fargo, the
only other loophole is that your computer might be infested with some
bad software.  But if this is the case, having the password on the
disk is a fairly low-priority and unlikely problem, because bigger and
more likely danger is that the software will send the password out
over the Internet.

You might ask Wells Fargo's technical support people about this issue.
 If they say their software doesn't store passwords on the computer,
and you think your virus protection and firewall are working, and you
haven't given your browser permission to store passwords, I think you
would be reasonably safe in giving up your computer for repair.

Have you tried <a href="http://www.clicktry.com/prod64.aspx">4Diskclean Gold</a>,
<a href="http://www.clicktry.com/prod75.aspx">CyberScrub Privacy Suite 
Professional</a>, <a href="http://www.clicktry.com/prod71.aspx">
HistorySweep</a> ?

if you are worried about your passwords, etc being stolen i am
guessing you are talking about using them on the internet and being
retained in the saved file information, you could disable the browser
from keeping any information about sessions, and if the files are just
on your hard drive you could encrypt the files you want to with
something like pgp, or gpg.