Unless you are a politician or a gangster there is no need to worry about computer forensics.
 A copy of everything you do on your computer can be accessed by a computer forensics specialist.

completely wiping your hard drive, completely reformatting it, and starting completely over, everything you have EVER done, every site you have EVER been to, every picture, video you have EVER looked at on your computer can be accessed by the properly trained and equipped person.

But as the ExGovenor said, most "normal" people don't have anything to worry about.
Just clearing your tempory internet files, your cookies, and your history via "internet options" will take care of it.

Someone said even though you use private brosing or onyx or something similar and you don't download your sites there is still evidence of your visit to  the sites on your computer as though you actually downloaded the info or videos to your computers
Is that true?

I clean my wanderings very often through Internet Options but how best to do it?

-- Modified on 6/14/2011 5:43:55 PM

What browsers are you both using? Under windows there is ccleaner which, if set properly will delete everythin. In addition if can be configured to erase the data via th DoD specification (I.e. Cannot be recovered reasonably using modern forensics). On a Mac I believe Onyx will clean upyour history etc.  I alo saw something about ccleaner for the Mac which would work.

Www.ccleaner.com

I wouldn't say everything you ever did is recoverable. The forensics use the fact that typical operation does not erase the data just frees up the space. when that space gets used again it gets over written which makes it harder. That's why the DOD erasing mentioned above actually overwrites several times with bit patterns designed to make sure all bits get overwritten. There is a residual magnetism that can sometimes be used but the more times an area is used and overwritten the less likely to restore useful data. Forensics use the fact that normal operation leaves a lot of data behind but not everything you ever did will be recoverable. Plus if you are really worried there are programs that do erase by doing a DOD wipe, but for normal people this is overkill. Also another DOD accepted practice to protect your remote working is to boot a cd that will run something like a ram only version of Linux to do your browsing and when you shut the computer off everything local is gone. Of course servers and networks can still monitor you but using a Ram only system will protect traces left on your own computer.

Try this: CC Cleaner by Piriform just google it.

It's free and provides several options on number of overwrites.