You’ll notice that the title of this article does not say format a hard drive but rather erase.

Most people are under the assumption that formatting a hard drive erases everything on it. Not true. A formatted drive can have its data recovered easily with utilities like this one.

Residual data that remains on a hard drive after it’s been formatted is referred to as data remanence.

While it is said that there is no way to truly erase a hard drive, low level formatting using what’s commonly known as a "DoD-7" will make it extremely difficult to recover data once this type of formatting has been performed.

The technical name for the DoD-7 is the US Department of Defense’s standard "National Industry Security Program Operating Manual" (US DoD 5220.22-M ECE). This formatting method overwrites a file seven times and is considered secure.

The DoD’s approach is, "Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify."

DoD-7 formats take a very long to complete, usually several hours. For some larger drives it may take the better half of a day before it’s finished.

When it is appropriate to perform DoD-7 formats?

For normal home use it’s not necessary since you are the one using the hard drive. However if you’re selling a hard drive or selling a computer with a hard drive you’ve used before, you should DoD-7 format it. Doing so gives you peace of mind that whoever gets your drive or computer won’t get access to any data that was on there before.

How can you perform a DoD-7 format?

There are both free and paid utilities to do this task.

One of the better paid utilities is KillDisk. This software is very convenient because not only will it install to a floppy disk, but also make a self-bootable USB stick or CD. Most of you out there would probably use a USB stick. Simply pop the stick in, run the software, choose the appropriate drive letter and you’ll have a boot-ready stick in a few short minutes. It has both DOS and Windows options, but to be honest the DOS version is easier and loads much faster.

A freeware utility that many swear by is Darik’s Boot and Nuke, commonly known as DBAN. It’s not as easy to use or configure as KillDisk is, but it definitely does the job.

Final note: Concerning low level formatting of this type, there is literally no reason to have a Windows style environment to do it. It is completely unnecessary to have VGA resolution and a mouse pointer just to perform a format. Do it the DOS/terminal way because it’s the best, fastest and most efficient.

This is actually a very easy question to answer: No. And it never has been. But don’t freak out about it. More on that in a moment.

When I say that email isn’t secure, I’m not referring to the username/ password you use to access your account. That’s a local level of security. Email isn’t secure because the vast majority of it is transferred from sender to recipient using nothing but plain unencrypted text. It’s the transport method where the insecurity happens.

Any message sent across the internet unencrypted can be intercepted and read easily because there’s nothing to decode.

In addition, the routing process of each mail you send hops across so many servers that any number of people could intercept your mail.

Side note: If you want to examine exactly how many hops it takes to get from you to a particular server on the internet, this is done using the trace route function.

In Windows: Start / Run / type cmd / press Enter

If you want to know how many hops it takes to get to mail.yahoo.com, type tracert mail.yahoo.com and press Enter once at the command prompt. It will take a few seconds to go show all the hops.

Should you be concerned now, knowing that email is so insecure?

Not really.

You have to remember that each email you send or receive is one of countless millions transferred every day on the internet. The likelihood of your mails being intercepted are extremely slim at best.

There have been those who have tried to make email more secure.

The only method of secure email that has had some limited success is the use of digital signatures.

Using the Microsoft way, Outlook Express and the newer Windows Live Mail can use what’s called a "Digital ID". In Windows Live Mail this is found via Tools / Safety Options / Security tab, then look under the heading "Secure Mail", like this:

Clicking "Get Digital ID" brings you to Microsoft Offline Online, because these IDs are tied to not only email but MS Office products as well.

Oh, and by the way, Digital IDs are not free.

Using the free method, you can use PGP. It is a pain to use. The only email client I’ve ever seen do it right is Mozilla Thunderbird outfitted with Enigmail.

On the Enigmail home page, it states under the "What do I need?" section:

You need a supported email client, the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), and a little patience.

Even they know it’s a pain to set up. And yes, I can vouch for this because I actually tried it out once for a few weeks. Sure, it works fine once everything is set proper, but it certainly not a 1-2-3 easy process.

"Are you saying the mail has to be tied to an email client in order to use these secure features?"

No. There is Hushmail. Email from that particular system is encrypted and freely available. It is the only one I know of that has encryption, is web-based and free.

However you have to bear in mind that even though your mail is encrypted, your recipients are most likely still using plain text.

In the end, email is insecure no matter how much you try to make it secure. But don’t lose any sleep over it.

Eraser is a secure file deletion utility. It works with any version of Windows (from Windows 95 to Vista) and even DOS.

When you delete a file from your computer it is not securely erased. There are ways it could be retrieved. However with Eraser, when a file is deleted using the utility, a file is deleted and overwritten several times with patterns. This makes it nearly impossible to retrieve a file deleted just by pressing the delete key on your keyboard.

Cool things about Eraser

• Runs on any version of Windows (as noted above)
• Has both 32-bit and 64-bit versions
• Has both an “On-Demand” mode and a “Scheduler” mode. You can do right-now deletion or scheduled deleting (could be handy for clearing browser cache).
• Free
• Very easy to use
• Fast
• Puts itself in the system tray so you know when it’s running (and when it isn’t)

Who would benefit most from Eraser?

People who use shared computers would benefit most from this utility. If the other people who use the same computer you do are nosy and try to retrieve files you’ve deleted, this utility as said above will make it nearly impossible to retrieve deleted files.

And even if no one else uses your computer but you, one can never be too careful with secure deletion of files.

Having a secure home network is your best defense against unwanted intrusions from the internet. Two methods (with multiple options) can be used to secure your home network. The first is hardware and the second is software.

Note before continuing: All the hardware and software in the world you use to protect your home network will not protect you against ignorance. You need to use common sense when using the internet. If there’s an e-mail you think looks suspicious, don’t open it. If there is a web site you think is suspicious, don’t browse that web site, and so on.

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