Computer Tracks
By
George Horton
So, you are leaving your job and wondering what to do with all the tracks you left on your work computer. While you were working there you used your computer to do things like check your email, send jokes to your co-workers, use instant messaging, and maybe even surf the web. Now, as you are leaving, you may want to make sure that you don’t leave your personal account information behind. Or maybe you just want to sell your old computer, either way, here are some clean up tips.
I should tell you that there is no way to erase everything off a harddrive. You can confuse it and scramble it, but technology being what it is someone can retrieve it if they wanted to put the effort into it. In fact, just by using an “index.dat viewer” anyone can see where you’ve been lately. Index.dat is an Internet Explorer file that remembers all your cookies, web pages and history. (I suspect that all browsers have similar files). OK, let’s get tracking.
Most Instant Messenger services have an option to save all your conversations. Make sure this is turned off, and delete any that you don’t want saved. (Tip; Save conversations as a text file as you finish them and put them in the clients or contacts folder).
You may also want to take a look at and disassociate any programs that automatically log you onto their servers, as the programs will need to save a copy of your password. (TIP; Do not allow Windows to remember your password)
For MSN Messenger and Windows XP there are two things you may need to do to clean up passwords. First, remove your account from the computer. In Control Panel, select User Accounts, click on Change an Account, click on your Windows login account, and then on the left column, click on Manage my network passwords. You should now be presented with a list of accounts, one of which should be your MSN Messenger Passport account. Select it and press the Remove button.
Disassociate the NET passport account: This applies only if you've "associated" your .NET passport with Windows XP. New installs of Windows XP are quite insistent that you associate a .NET passport with your Windows account, and most people simply use their regular instant messaging passport. In Control Panel, select User Accounts, click on Change an Account, and Change my .NET Passport. Change the passport to something else. (TIP; Next job you get, try setting up a throw-away passport account that you can use just for work).
As a general house keeping tip, your history, and Internet Explorers cache contain a lot of information about the websites you've been visiting. Clear them both. In IE, click on Tools, Internet Options, General. In Temporary Internet Files, press Delete Files..., select Delete all offline content and press OK. Once that's complete, also press Clear History and Delete Cookies. In the future: Consider turning off or minimizing IE's cache and history. If you use a browser other than IE, it will have similar caches and settings that you'll want to visit. (This is where the “index.dat” file will be cleared after you reboot).
Email will vary a lot based on the email client you're using, but in general here are a few things you'll want to look at: Empty any "deleted mail" folders. Scan for personal mail in all remaining folders. You'll have to understand what's appropriate to delete and not. Don't forget the "Sent Mail" folder, if you have one. Remove your personal email account settings. From a different machine, ideally your own, and after you are completely done with your work machine, change the password on your email account. (In the future: Consider using only a web based email to access your personal email on your work machine).
Windows items to look at include: The “My Documents” folder including the subdirectories. “My Downloads” folder is an often overlooked folder where items could be left. Right click the Start menu, select Properties, select the Start Menu tab, and click the Customize button. If you're using "Classic Start menu", then just press the Clear button on the next dialog. If you're using the normal "Start Menu", then on the General tab press the Clear List button, and then on the advanced tab press the Clear List button.
When you’ve completed these tasks you should reboot your machine and defragment. Go to; Start, programs, accessories, system tools, disk defragmenter. (defragmenting every couple of months will help your machine to work better as it frees up memory, clears old files, and rearranges programs that you use often so they open faster).
Whyz tip; saving your emails has never been easy. In fact, it can be a nuisance to go through the process of preserving these very important communiqués that we couldn’t live without… Anyway, here’s what I do. If you are using MS Outlook as your email program, (all programs should be similar) under the ‘edit’ button ‘select all’ the emails in any folder, (or any combination of emails). With them highlighted, go to the ‘file’ menu and click ‘save as’ then type a name for the file. Make sure that you know which folder it is going to or create a new folder. Save it as a ‘text’ (.txt) file. Text files do not take up much space and you can search them using the “ctrl + F” shortcut to do word searches later and you can save a lot of text files on a floppy disk for easy backups.
Surf Safe
George Horton
www.kcnb.ca