Aaron, in his self inflating importance, has again failed to give proper information on this subject....probably because he knows nothing about how things really work...

defragmentation will indeed speed up performance and overwrite some areas of your HDD...but not all...even if you defragment and then completely fill up your drive with data, there will still be possible areas where past data is accessible (even by free programs)...temp files, page files, etc....

about the only thing he has gotten right is that it is 'expensive' to truly retrieve data (and even getting that 'straight' answer was hard)....

for the truly worried I suggest totally wiping your HDD....nuke your HDD

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
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Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

Thank you peerless and Aaron for your input. I'll have to get around trying that nuke thing. This thing has had me so stressed out and sleepless recently. I feel like the only way to make sure things don't turn bad is to go to the authorities and tell them what happened, but I fear they won't believe me. Is there any way to anonymously ask for advice from the authorities on this matter?

I personally stay away from all filesharing, newsgroups, and any other unsafe house of porn. I don't know how many of the cases where people in this thread who got in trouble are actually an accident or they are just lieing to themselves, but I would not take the chance. Through a combination of the justice systems and general publics ignorance of technology and incredibly harsh laws for mere possession, and then with filesharing it becomes 'promotion' as well, it's simply to risky to go to those places for good ol' legal pornography.

This article should rightly scare the pants of you if you downloaded anything like that; these guys are in the worse possible position. It's impossible to tell who might be a victim of circumstance and who has a major problem with this kind of stuff because they lump them all together and call them 'vile, disgusting deviants'. Thanks to recent Florida law changes by politicians looking for easy targets, these guys are facing the same kind of sentences murderers face.

19 Arrested in Child Porn Bust | TheLedger.com

One of the accused-
'Mitchell Parker, 22, of Lakeland said he didn't do it.

"I'll say one thing, don't ever get Bearshare or Limewire," he said, denying that he ever downloaded the illegal material. "I am disgusted. I wish I was in a battery acid pool right now." '

Oh my god. Guys that article has me truly terrified, I fee like just crying. Should I just go to the authorities?

Sorry brother, did not mean to terrify you. That sheriff in the article is especially into that kind of crime, he's kinda creepy actually when you here him talk. If you just downloaded half of something and then deleted it I really don't think you have anything to worry about with most professional law enforcement. Despite what they could possibly get you for if your hard drive was not clean, they would see the incident as a very non-intentional one based on that. And the fact is that if you have not had anyone knock on your door yet, very slim chance that you are ever going to. Real federal law enforcement is going to be looking for regular activity and then move in directly after a download or an exchange of some kind so they know they have current, real evidence; not to waste their time with an old half-event like yours. They want to catch people who are actually doing something wrong. Follow the good advice presented to you here, please stay clear of dangerous activity but please have peace of mind also my friend. You are going to be fine.

I have been violently ill, nauseous, paranoid, the whole 9 yards having downloaded a supposed kp file on accident (meaning i didnt open the file to confirm my fear if it was just a prank file). I first had a filter in with words like child, pedophile, kid, kiddy...but i didnt have pedo in there nor 16yo 17yo, and had 3 files come in under those 3 tags. one was pedo one was 16 and one was 17. I searched my incomplete folder and found them there. My heart started racing and my stomach started hurting and i bagan recitting what i would want to say in court if this **** got deep. it was on accident. now im paranoid. i dont have a floppy drive so the Nuke drive option doesnt seem to be option does it? how can i clean it other than defragging? this is keeping me up at night and driving me insane.

i cant eat, cant sleep, i feel like im going to puke and should just throw my pc away

all things considered your worst fear should be the reaction of your significant other, if there is one...and that's if they are keeping track of what you are doing...

if the file is still listed as being there in your OS (i.e. you haven't deleted it yet) then some sort of data eraser set to overwrite the file multiple times should be OK for your situation....if you have already deleted it then defragging and then filling up your drive to the max should remove the data from 'easy' retrieval....

if this is a first time, one time, occurrence then forensic analysis of your HDD would prove that....

darin's boot and nuke is also available in .ISO format which can be put on a CD and booted from just like the floppy file...if you are that paranoid and want to follow that route then be aware that you do have a project for yourself...backing up all important data...doing the boot and nuke...then the reinstall of your OS...make sure to have ALL drivers available for use and install your chipset drivers just after you boot into the clean OS the first time then reboot and install other drivers...the chipset drivers are MotherBoard specific and tell it how to operate with the OS...

I would suggest that the first thing you do after getting basic drivers and such installed is to do a full update on the OS, then start installing the programs you wish...then upon completion of all the dirty work defrag the drive and go on with life....

__________________


So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

this has happened before i believe which is why i think i deleted the program awhile back because the program LimeWire had these illegal files to begin with. Then having seen Frostwire and had entered in the keywords in the filter, i thought this wouldnt happen again. I'm thinking about never downloading the damn file searching things ever again cause this is bs theres some much crap on these servers. trying to find a good bdsm video sometimes gay (if that says anything about my orientation) instead i get something potentially illegal. its bullcrap. what happened was i entered gay **** (i like those dramas) and then i just hit shift key to get like all the ones above 10 gigs. so i must have had a good 50 or so legal ones and 3 were under the radar and got in the imcomplete folder. this really scared the turds out of me.

i deleted the files, the entire incomplete folder and defragged almost ten times.

seriously, why doesnt limewire or frostwire just set their own filter on their server already - jeebus

because there are no servers....sounds like you need to do a little research on modern p2p programs....the only 'servers' are each person's shared folder which is on their own machine....

__________________


So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

alright - im still learning bout this stuff, i do appreciate the knowledge. btw i dont have a burner. so they were deleted and defragged. i read up a few posts up that if they are deleted which they are then i stand a chance explaining myself if fbi investigate me, may. but thats their waste of time being A) i dont have any potential or real illegal files on the drive B) they may not have been even real illgeal movies - perhaps they were just tagged pedo or 14yo - but in fact just another misltagged tag (which many seem to be jsut tags, example, was downloading a gay porn tagged gay and came out was about some girl ****ing a guy, mistagged, maybe these were misstagged too)

so im not too worried now that im using my logical brain. its just really doesnt seem worth my stress to use these programs. then again maybe i should look before i leap rather than hit shift and download many files tagged one thing which may be tagged with something else as well.

example: "hey ill enter gay porn into the search" hey look 20 files, weee!!!! click, download all....hey what the? whats this in my folder? oh god what if its real? DELETE DELETE DELETE... this has happened in the past when i download multiple files. thats why i swicthed to frostwire but yet again filtering wasnt enough - means i cant download multple files - i have to read each file being before downloading...which sucks cause i like downloading many files cause many wont download fast enough lol