The computers are managed by an operating system (in this case we are talking about Windows) on which some programs and applications run which save various information and data during their normal use, often without the user being aware of it. This means that if a stranger takes possession of a computer not his own, he can read and see all the information saved by the various programs and the operating system and, therefore, can analyze the past of a pc .
In this post we see a summary of how it is possible to know everything about the recent use of the PC, the latest activities on programs and files and how to prevent the computer from storing information or erasing it when necessary such as, for example, when you lend your computer to someone (From cybersecurity laws, if someone has physical access to your PC, it is no longer your computer).
1) View the deleted files .
When you delete files by emptying the recycle bin, they are not really deleted, only the system is told that the space occupied by them can be considered free and rewritable with other data.
As long as that disk space is not rewritten, the files, those that Windows no longer sees, can instead be easily recovered by some programs.
Windows does not completely delete the deleted files because otherwise any deletion would be slow and would waste a lot of time; it is much faster then to delete the references to these files rather than the file itself.
As seen in another post, the best programs to recover deleted or deleted files are:
Recuva
Pc inspector File recovery
DiskDigger
Glary Undelete
Undelete Plus
Panda Recovery
Conversely, you can clean up the free disk space and permanently delete all the deleted files by overwriting them several times and making them unrecoverable.
You can therefore use a program such as the aforementioned Ccleaner with its tool to reclaim the free space of the drive or other programs such as Eraser to delete files safely and definitively .
2) The web and the browser history have been discussed several times with in-depth guides to browse privately or incognito avoiding data being saved from the computer and to delete traces of web browsing and eliminate cached files and cookies on Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer .
Web browsers record all the sites visited in a history that is saved in some internal folders of the system.
Using different tools you can extract the information from the cache and see which sites have been recently browsed on that pc and what has been downloaded to the computer.
Among the simplest programs for viewing website history, there are:
Programs to view site logins and passwords
Firefox Cache Viewer
Google Chrome Cache View
Video Cache View
IE Cache Viewer
Opera Cache View
3) Recent elements
One area of Windows where you could get a lot of information about using your computer is the list of recently opened, modified and recently created files and the most recently used programs .
You can access this information directly from the Windows Start menu or, for each program, from the File menu which often lists a history of the most recently opened files.
Even better, to have each historical list of what has been done on the PC you can use the following free and portable programs:
- ExecutedProgramsList for the list of open executable files and, therefore, of the latest programs used on the PC
- LastActivityView lists events and activities on the system, including activities on files and folders and software installations.
- OpenSaveFilesView lists all open and saved files.
- TurnedOnTimesView analyzes the Windows event log to find the computer's on and off times.
- USBDeview lists all the latest USB devices connected to the computer
- WiFiHistoryView to see the wifi networks the PC has connected to in the past.
To prevent Windows from displaying recent files, right-click on the start menu in the lower left, access the properties and, from the Start Menu tab, press the Customize button and deselect recent items.
To clear the usage history of the programs, you must instead use one of those programs that do the cleaning of the Windows computer as the usual Ccleaner or others that also delete the registry keys.
Finally, in another article, I remember that there are forensic computer programs that visualize the entire activity and past use of a computer, provided that all traces have not been erased.
Conversely, if you really want to hide files on your computer, you can use a program like TrueCrypt, the best one to protect files and folders with passwords.
