PrivaZer Discussion Thread

@ PrivaZer

I wasn't aware of that ! How does PrivaZer deal with such files ?

 

It doesnt because its supposed to be manual work. Nobody can know exactly how critical a file is (apart from the obvious temp and backup files) except yourself. Privazer, Ccleaner and such other cleaners clean the obvious temporary, old and backup etc files and you can clean the free space to avoid recovering those files. BUT ultimately you have to decide how sensitive a file is, it could be a benign saved webpage or a database containing your bank and email accounts, thats where the context shredding come along to make life easier. Also the article mentions entire drive cleaning, which means everything is gone forever from that drive, thats ideal when you are donating your drive to someone as stated in that article.

 

Hi, i thought "sensitive files that haven't yet been deleted" meant ones that some people might have for eg, deleted to the Recycle Bin, but haven't yet been deleted. That's why i wondered why CCleaner won't touch them, & if PrivaZer would/does.

 

Ccleaner does if you check it in the cleaner.

 

Hello CloneRanger,

PrivaZer will securely clean your PC, empty your recycle bin and clean you free space by default.

Hope it helps.

 

Hello to all,

new PrivaZer released v2.20
http://privazer.com/download.php

Changelog :
- Improved secure deletion speed
- Improved recycle bin cleanup
- Improved secure deletion of directories
. Improved support of Unicode
- Improved UI

@caspian
Please give it a try.

Thanks

 

Thanks buddy. I will install this and give it a try. This is such a wonderful software and so many of us appreciate you. Thanks. I will send a donation from the website.

 

I have a file to delete and have it recorded in the 'Include' list but actually the file is usually locked and does not get deleted.
Issues...

1. Why does Privazer not give a warning/error message to the effect that the file has not been deleted?
2. If failed, is it not possible to add it to a cleaning list at shutdown i.e. as with the pagefile
3. If not possible can it be added to the startup process as a simple deletion

Any other ideas most welcome - I am on 2.20

 

Hello,

Since using v2.** I have tried to clean Free space traces on SSD. However it's not cleaning any of the sectors?

What im i doing wrong? I know it works on HDD.

I tried all setting and its not cleaning? or also tried secure erase?

Thanks.

 

Hello,

@takiabtom
An error message or a message informing that the file will be cleaned at PC reboot will be added when a file listed in the "Include" list has not been deleted.
Thanks.

@Nuclear44
Do you have an encrypted SSD ?

 

No.

 

So,
please use the new release v2.20.1
and keep us informed :
http://privazer.com/download.php

Works?

 

No sorry. However here's a screen shot after cleaning.

 

1. Can you click on "Examples of sectors to reset to zero" ?
Browse the examples. Do you see the same raw data as shown on your previous screenshot ?

2. what is your SSD ?

 

Yes, they all look like the screenshot.

OCZ Vertex 4 SSD.

 

I'd like to see a custom user option to browse to and delete registry keys and values. (R-Wipe has this useful feature).

One example as for why is that there is that there is a foible in many win7 installations whereby some icons from the notification area customization list cannot easily be deleted.

Indeed on my win7 privazer itself remains listed there - Truecrypt and utorrent are others.

Currently I use an R-W custom setting to delete the values and a bat file to stop and restart explorer afterwards:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@Echo off

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
sleep 18
start explorer.exe

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The customization entries will return on reboot if the latter isn't also deployed.


mft
I'm also still finding that (despite improvements following my earlier comments) that the cleaning of the mft requires improvement. I'm still finding more recognisable residue of names than i would like and also dates are always listed even for those cleaned entries with no names...you really need to address this - metadata as the recent revelations have highlighted is as valuable as content.

If an investigator knew that such and such a file was downloaded on a specific date they'd be examining metadate residue even if the file content were irrecoverable. Piece together several file dates and they'd be even more in business with cause to investigate further.

 

Hi. I downloaded and installed the latest Privazer and ran an experiment. You asked for a live experiment but I don't know how to create a video of my computer. But I did make some screenshots. I had downloaded a set of frog photography from an artist. I transfered the folder over to my external drive. And then I highlighted all of the images, right clicked, and told Privazer to wipe them. Initially, all of the names had been changed to zeros and the images were all white, but they were still there. So I decided to copy them back over to my desktop and create an example for you with screenshots. So these are on my desktop.

So I highlighted all of the images and right clicked on them for Privazer to wipe.

http://i.imgur.com/yPeSyhW.jpg

This time, only 5 of the images remained without fully wiping.

http://i.imgur.com/z3dJCyb

This is a screenshot showing the size of the first image. 249 kb were left.

http://i.imgur.com/gxn6aa3

 

Hello Caspian,

could you send us those files to support@privazer.com ?

 

I can't send the exact same ones but I did the experiment again and 3 files were left. I sent a copy of the original folder plus the 3 files that did not completely wipe.

 

Hello Caspian,

there were no enclosed files in your email.
Please resend it.

 

Hello,

 

I am so sorry. I was trying a new email provider and for some reason the attachment didn't take. I uploaded a group of larger examples that I am sending in a PM. Four folders. Two of the folders are single files that did not wipe completely but were renamed to all zeros. I included a copy of the original file in each. The other two folders have groups of files that I highlighted to wipe as a group. These two folders also contain the originals.

 

First time discovering PrivaZer (following hints on Wilders and elsewhere!) and I have to say I am very impressed. It isn't easy designing security software that anyone can understand and use, and which is still useful and comprehensive even for 'power users' and other security-aware people. You have done that, superbly. The program is clear, comprehensive, and simple to understand, yet seems fairly thorough and no "bloat". Thank you.

I have a few quick improvement ideas:

1. Does PrivaZer delete as standard all the usual traces of its own use before exiting (including shellbags containing that name from browsing to the containing folder or website)? It should have that ability and enable it by default. After all, if data is removed but PrivaZer related keys and traces are left visible instead, that may defeat the purpose.....
2. Perhaps integrate the shellbags utility fully with the main PrivaZer program? Doesn't seem to need a separate program.
3. It might be much neater (for an end user) and less easy to omit, if PrivaZer offers (as an option) to kill Explorer first and restart it after registry/shellbags cleanup. This would mean no more need to warn the user "DO NOT CHANGE EXPLORER BEFORE LOGGING OUT!" Several other programs do this when updating Explorer's registry.

In terms of extra functions, for me there's one big area missing, related to viewing the analysis, and whitelisting cleanups. Four issues, all in this area, would be huge to do something with these:

1. Issue: The user cannot view all "issues" at once on a cleanup, its a very slow job to "drill down". One must click on each cleanup area in turn (eg "registry"). Then for each cleanup area, one must click "options >" (shows 12 subcategories in 2 groups!) to view the list. The list is them broken into categories yet again (deleted files, external files, existing files, etc) but *those* need me to use the dropdown boxes to view them by category, again clicking a new dropdown for each category. The drill-down is useful, and the layout is easy for newcomers, but for anyone trying to review all the issues identified it's impossibly slow and many clicks. You cannot just "expand the full tree at once so I can scroll down it and see everything", or pick out the actual areas of personal interest.
   
   Request: an option to use a "tree" layout for the list of cleanup areas that uses an expanding tree rather than checkbox items, so one can expand all or collapse all cleanup areas, and see all categories/subcategories in one structure?
   
   
2. Issue: It seems the user cannot whitelist items, so you cannot delete "most" folder references but leave those pointing to this or that location (which are OK), or delete all MRU for .exe files but leave MRU related to recent .DOCX or .XLSX that may be useful to have in "recent files". In other words it seems that you cannot (even as an advanced user) say that, for usability or plausible deniability, certain MRU entries or websites, or the main "C" drive, or certain registry keys and subkeys, are OK and useful to have in history, but PrivaZer should clean everything else not whitelisted.
   
   Request: a whitelisting system of some kind? Obviously this wouldn't be a "basic" function.
   
   
3. Issue: It seems impossible to get reports from all functions, or one report of the whole analysis? Some allow you to dump a report.txt but others don't.
   
   Request: a link/button to "save analysis to a text file". But this analysis could be huge, so also a simple read-only viewer that lets one see saved .txt reports in tree format (expand+collapsible).
   
   
4. Issue: It may help a lot, if the user can clean up traces according to the kind of issue or risk they present, and not their computer location. Most users probably don't care so much whether a trace was in a MFT or registry; they care much more what information it could show. Being able to sort the analysis according to what they show, rather than where they were found, probably aligns more closely with user thinking process and cleanup desires, so it is more intuitive for basic users. It allows a user to automatically remove ALL TRACES, AND ONLY THOSE TRACES (whether registry, MFT, empty disk space, or whatever) having some specific issue/risk they care about, if they wish.
   
   Request: a way to identify with fairly simple "broad brush" rules, whether a trace shows certain kinds of issue/risk, and give the user an option to sort the analysis according to what they may reveal, not where they occurred. The categories might be "Shows files/folders accessed", "Shows files executed", "Shows websites visited and downloads" (which includes registry but also cookies and disk cache. etc), "Shows removable storage devices used", "shows networked storage devices used", "Have these keywords", "Other" and so on. Their subcategories might be the exact website they relate to, or individual devices connected. Obviously some kinds of trace will fall into more than one of these categories (an executable run from a USB stick or network share).

Looking forward to future PrivaZer releases!!!

 

Evercookies/Zombiecookies were mentioned many pages back. Has this issue been fully addressed and is it verified that PrivaZer clears them all at this time or not?

Thank you for all your difficult work.

Best regards

 

Hello Q_section,

sorry, Evercookies/Zombiecookies cleanup is not yet implemented.
We first intend to add a way to clean cookies in the new WebCacheV01.dat, and then we will take care of Evercookies/Zombiecookies


Hello Stilez,

thanks for all your suggestions !

-------------------------------
1. yes, PrivaZer deletes its own traces after use.

2. ShellBag offers more options than PrivaZer (like the ability to remove all ShellBags). PrivaZer deletes ShellBags tha can lead to a privacy issue.

2. We understand your point but killing Explorer.exe is not graceful.

-------------------------------
1. Tree layout : added to our roadmap !

2. whitelisting MRU : added to our roadmap !

3. "save analysis to a text file" : added to our roadmap !

4. It was already on our roadmap and we intend to add this feature during this summer !