Forensic and Data Recovery Experts Eraser Challenge !

I do not use a paper shredder as I find it suspect to shred documents.

You must be kidding! Give me your address, in fact, in the interest of full disclosure, post it on here for the world to see. Then we'll see how valuable it is to shred documents.

No, I do not support giving the military or any other institution the right to destroy information. I believe in making such things public when the information does no longer put the civilian/government/military population in harms way. I believe the people have a right to know the truth.

Covert operations (amonst thousands of other examples). People that do and have served either the military or intelligence agencies, whose names need to be protected to keep them and their innocent families safe from harm.

There is no need to have a data shredder whilst format or fdisk does the job quite well already. It isn't that you want to clean a disk, you want to destroy evidence of something. Anything worth hiding is worth finding.

Why don't you ask Jamie if you can post an image of your computer hard drive on here for us all to download and analyse? Go ahead, format it first. We'll post the results here for the world to see. You obviously don't mind because you have nothing to hide.

The only worth this application has is to hide evidence. It is overkill to wipe a disk with it, do you really feel it is necessary to wipe a disk in such a way before giving it to someone? If you have become so paranoid then perhaps your psychological state is suspect.

Once you give a storage device away you lose control of who has access to it. How do you know that moden-day dumpster divers aren't getting hold of you personal data and using it in a criminal way? Honestly, believe what you will, but look at how many respectable people on here use the software, are we all psychologically unstable?

You can call it what you want and give reasons for its usefulness all day long but by the end of the day we realize the destructiveness of this application and witness its malevolent nature as threatening. Such things should not be allowed to develop any further and in fact should be illegal.

In many countries tools like this are considered illegal but only if you use it for illegal purposes. You have been given many different applications for this software and yet you continue to argue that its wrong and pointless

However, I am not the one to pass such judgments nor to write such laws to banish them. I am only capable of adapting to this ever changing environment and discovering new ways to progress with each step toward a more civil and safer world. If it must be a fact that there are such persons on this planet that choose to use their skills to do harm, then I suppose that all I can continue to do is to first except that and then do whatever I can to help those effected by it find justice through vindication if not by prevention alone.

Why not just make it illegal for anyone to delete anything on their computers, after all, deleting things is only one step up from this! You can not possibly believe what you are saying, if you do believe it then I recommend you open a poll on here and ask how many people think such software should be banned.

Overwriter, I'd love to get you on my podcast for a discussion about this.

http//www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/08/hard_drive_hammer_destruction/
http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7816446.stm

Installs fine now, thanks.

Edit Doesn't run very well though ! After setting up an erase run ( to run immediately - Bristish Standard [ of course 😉 ], Slack Space and Recycle Bin, it started running fine, I minimised it, then on re-opening the window to see progress, I got the eraser window with all the check boxes and data entry fields, but no text anywhere … Then a bit later on, it crashed. -/

http//www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/08/hard_drive_hammer_destruction/
http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7816446.stm

Those articles are ridiculous. I had never heard of Which? Computing before and I hope I never do again. I can't believe the BBC regurgitated that crap.

Jeff

Those articles are ridiculous. I had never heard of Which? Computing before and I hope I never do again. I can't believe the BBC regurgitated that crap.

Hmmm…not so sure I agree. What is it you find ridiculous?

Jamie

Hi guys,

Look how worthless this post became, sorry. Well let me just say before fists start flying that I am all about privacy (personal privacy), I was referring to paper shredders in an institution setting. I know it helps protect them from fraud but I still find it suspect to shred things. I guess I just want to know what it was more now that it is gone.

I am sure your program does good things. Like a gun. In my hands it is used to protect, but in the hands of another perhaps it might be used to murder or rob. If we didn't have guns then I suppose I'd carry a knife and a knife would be the new gun, and if we got rid of knives then perhaps rocks would become the new knife, and eventually a stick, and so on. Now my point is you can make a "gun" but how can you ensure it isn't used to do harm? You can't so why make it at all? How helpful to the good guys is it really and how helpful is it to the bad guys really? Which side does it serve best? Here is some plutonium, use it to power your towns… wait, what are you doing? PUT THAT BOMB DOWN!!

Anyway, to the OP I don't dislike you at all, I regard you as a veteran programmer. You obviously have a lot of skill, and if you truly feel you are helping good people then what wrong have you done? It seems you have helped people, whether they fit the definition of good is obsolete but surely their results served some good, therefore I find it quite neutral. This is a very "grey hat" software and with that you should know that there is the potential to hurt someone innocent, so you should keep that in mind. After all, someday that person could be you and wouldn't that be something?

Finally, my own personal privacy is important to me and I hide as much of it from would be schemers as much as I can and I expect everyone to do so. But, think about it, really think about it. How hard do you really think it is to find out anything I want about someone? Sure if they live far away I would have more trouble but lets say my neighbor for example. How hard would you think it would be for me to tap his phone line, or steal his mail, hack his wireless, break into his car, or follow him about to plot his daily motion? Your computers are but one more place to look.