A few questions and a hello

Hello everyone this is my first post on this forum so I hope this is the right forum for this post if not then I apologize in advance and with that out of the way I would like to ask a few questions if I may.

1.) How secure is the "clear private data" function in firefox, basically what I want to know is what type of erasing does it do (ie. DoD, Gutmann, One Pass Random, One Pass Zeros, None ...) ?

2.) If it doesn't use a secure file deletion method is there an extension that does?

3.) I am running a dual boot system with XP & Vista and I have only been using Vista for about a week or so now but from what I have read Vista likes to keep alot of information on your system that XP did not (i.e. volume shadow copy, Transactional NTFS, ...) and because of that and the fact that I really don't know the "inner workings" of Vista yet I am concerned that Vista might leave copies of my data behind once it's been deleted so my question here is if it's is enough to just disable the volume shadow copy service and use a programs like ccleaner & eraser to take care of the rest or are there other programs / tricks that I need to employ to keep my system secure ?

TIA,
TecSec

 

Wow 65 views on what would seem like fairly straightforward questions and not a single reply. How can you all proclaim to be a security forum and not know a thing about security. Truly pathetic but I found my answers on my own and if anyone else stumbles upon this question (if they don't delete it for being honest that is) then here is the answers to the questions I posted about.

For question 1: check this link http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/28068

For question 2: No "one" extension which will securely erase all your browser data but you can reduce the amount that is stored in the first place by using a combination of extensions (ie. adblock, noscript, ...) and by changing a few settings in firefox itself to disallow content from being stored in the first place.

For question 3: As a programmer I will write my own program that takes care of all this for me and release it to the public as an OpenSource project so others can contribute filling in areas I may not be aware at the time. In the meantime you should continue to use programs like eraser, ccleaner, and truecrypt to help keep your personal information personal.

With that being said I would again like to say the lack of responses on this forum are truly pathetic and if this post is not deleted (which it more then likely will be) I am sure I will now get a few responses but you can save the flames for someone else because I have no intentions of returning to this "so-called" security forum any time soon.

Tecsec

 

I am in no way a security expert, but will try to tackle the above questions.
1) Having limited experience with Firefox and not being its author, I would not be able to answer this question.

2) I don't know all of the Firefox extensions and haven't come across one that does this function.

3) Being slow in updating my PCs, I don't know the Vista Operating System so I could not answer this question.

P.S. I just read this post today, so I was not one of the "lurkers" who viewed it previously.

 

If you set firefox to delete all private data upon closing then what type of data is there that you think still resides in firefox?

 

Firefox does simple file deletion for the "clear private data feature." If you want secure deletion, you can get CCleaner.

Also, in about:config, there is a "session restore setting" that can save your tracks, so you can disable that if you don't want it.

It's specifically called "browser.sessionrestore.resume_from_crash"