Hi guys and gals, I want to use the D-ban program to nuke part of my hard drive. I have a few questions. My situation is this. In the past I have 'possibly' illegally d/l copious amounts of music, movies, porn ect... from lime-wire and other programs. Since then I have deleted it from the shared folders and pasted onto the other partition on my hard-drive for library keeping and then deleted the shared folders. My thinking is this. They can't prove I didn't acquire those files by legal means and since they are all just mp3s and avi's or whatever they should be safe if they are just there or am i wrong?

First: I have all this data on one partition that is just music and movies ect... I don't want to reinstall these if possible cause its like 90 gigs so using this program can I choose to nuke just the partition that windows and programs are on (i.e. limewire and my shared folders ect... and history)? And if so how complete a nuke would this be? Would the other partition which is just media files and never had a program or anything else on it still be vulnerable to incriminating forensic analysis? I guess what I'm saying is does a partition effectively make two separate entities, in which I can clean one and be at ease? Because if alot of what I d/l was maybe pirated media and erasing all the d/l info programs and history ect... from the one partition would erase evidence no?

Also, If I backed up my partition with windows and programs on a blank hard-drive, nuked the partition, and then restored it with the copy on the back-up hard-drive would that just replace the information and stuff I was trying to remove. If so is there a way to selectively back up and nuke so that I don't have to reinstall 50 things in my program file and even windows itself, but still rest at ease knowing that the computers history is fresh at least in the eyes of any potential law in-queries?

Exactly! There absolutely has to be some sort of verified and
solid evidence in hand before the police can proceed.

A phone call or email is never enough by itself, so the police
have to investigate and get some probable cause that a
crime has been committed before getting a warrant for
search or arrest. Someone who has accidentally
downloaded and then deleted a file is never going to find
themselves in such a position because no such evidence
exists. Any search or arrest (which would have to be based
solely on hearsay or suspicion) against such a person would
automatically be thrown out of court as soon as it is
discovered that the mandatory hurdle of probable cause had
been ignored.

Even if a person had been caught with millions of files, that
evidence would be permanently inadmissible if the police
had obtained it illegally. In the case where an innocent
person is illegally tagged with a single file, it would be the
policemen and prosecutors facing criminal charges, not the
other way around.

What you are describing there is a case involving a person
who shares such files, against whom a screenshot
showing the files being shared can be obtained. If
you are imagining a case in which an innocent person could
be logged downloading such a file, don't forget that
the only person capable of providing a screenshot or
testimony is the very same person who is actually
sharing the file and breaking the law. The police
cannot ever commit a crime to catch a criminal, so that
scenario is completely ruled out too.

The bottom line is that anyone who accidentally downloads
and then deletes an illegal file of any kind is completely
safe from prosecution. The only way they could get
themselves in trouble is to let themselves be tricked into
confessing to more than they actually did. Even then, any
competent lawyer could expose the trickery and nullify that
improbable and hypothetical threat.

So, there's not much point in destroying all your data and
reformatting your whole disk when just deleting the file and
defragging or wiping free space is going to work well
enough. In fact, taking such an extreme measure will tend
to indicate to anybody that more was going on and would
tend to raise suspicion.

Great answer!!

Skribz 396.
What are you trying to do martyr yourself,talk about overreaction! you have been given all the advice that you need to clean up your mistake,and to be at peace.
If you continue pushing this,then I believe that you must have underlying issues,or motives that need resolving.
N2

__________________
''Kindness is the hardest thing to give away,it keeps coming back''

@AW: Please forget about defragging. Now.

Ever heard about disk forensics? They cut open your disk in a clean room and check the bits one at a time, and they can recover drives run over by cars for anything between 400€ and a few thousand Euro.

The only way to be halfway sure that unencrypted data can't be recovered is to use some data burning tools (they overwrite the data with random bits _multiple times_), and even that isn't safe, because harddisks optimize a bit too eagerly these times and might just point the data burn tools to different bits even though they say that they write to the same ones.

The way to be mostly safe is to create an encrypted partition/section on your drive and save the data into it.

If you then want to delete it, you just have to delete and overwrite the encrypted partition, because encrypted files can't be recovered from remaining shreds, while for unencrypted files small shreds suffice to show which fiels where there.

Be vary of incomplete files, though. They must go into the encrypted partition, too.

And make sure you read up on the encryption algorythm you use. If it encrypts in smaller parts, then you must make sure that every part is getting shredded.

And while I'm at it: You shouldn't download copyright infringing files in the first place. And even less in unencrypted networks. They just need to bust the one you downloaded _from_ to get enough evidence against you.

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People

Much more important than accidentally downloading a few dodgy files is having your identity and credit card details stolen and used for criminal activities.

I came across this story today on the BBC website whereby this man had his life almost destroyed because an online site that he used to buy goods from was not as secure as it should have been.

Falsely Branded A Paedophile

Therefore, those of you out there that are worrying yourselves into heart attacks and/or mental breakdowns should consider how secure is your computer and, above all, how secure are the online stores you use.



(Back for this post only) UK Bob

Yeah, there are parts of the files that are left on the HD, and therefore are recoverable. That's like file recovery progs work. Only if you use a shredder, you are shure about having no traces left on you HD (If you use a good one).

hmm...I doubt it. I still think any computer can be traced if worse came to worse so still be careful but highly doubt the police will even consider it. It happens!

Thank you mr. Walkhouse for your fast and informative response I got a letter from my university informing me that Universal or some studio was able to d/l the movie halfbaked of my pc which i didn't know I was even sharing so they took my internet away (on roomates pc) and i've been a nervous wreck ever since. I will do as you suggested and hopefully this will all blow over.

@sageecl: Please excuse me for not giving you that much feeling of security.

You were possibly sharing it, so they have evidence against you. Be careful in what you do, and get someone skilled in law _now_, so you know how to respeond if someone should suddenly come in.

@Aaron Walkhouse:

Correct information:

Backup software won't copy deleted files, as long as you remembered to empty the trash...


Mistakes:

Just downloading doesn't get you into trouble

In germany downloading is illegal and will get you into trouble.

The law was changed a few years ago, so yout info might just be outdated.

They can't catch you if you don't share

And they can just join the download mesh of your file, so they don't even need to share it. Your client tells them "I have parts a...z of the file". Same is true for BitTorrent and edonkey.

Please research the inner workings of Gnutella before giving this wrong advice again.
A good starting point is Gnutella for Users - Gnufu

The topic is "the download mesh".

The police acts only on solid evidence

Again german law (that's what I know best): If they need to secure evidence, they will get a warrant from a judge. Yes, it will take some time, but a few weeks definitely suffice - and some judges are faster in that than others.

Tell a judge "we have information, that this person shares files illegally, but we need to get his computer to secure hard evidence" and the judge will give you a warrant (more exactly: He'll give the warrant to the police - there goes your computer).

And that search is then authorized by a judge and all "secured" evidence can be used against you in court.

How else should anonymous tips ever be efficient?


Please be more careful what you tell unsuspecting users, especially since you won't be the one running into problems from your info, but others might pay for your carelessness.

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