Arkansas Blog

I have a question for any legal type out there. Or maybe any technical type.

What exactly is downloading?

My wife used to forward emails from her friends that are of the "cute" variety, sleeping kittens, buterflies on flowers in the mist and some with naked kids playing in sprinklers etc.

With this being a work computer I didn't think it was appropriate. Hell one time an offhand comment landed me a two day "Executive Sensitivity Seminar" in Atlanta. The offended new hire later appologized for the ordeal.

We advertise on Google and all the responding emails from below the Mason-Dixon line and from Texas to the Atlantic come into my computer.

Is opening an attachment downloading? I get a lot of spam. For about a year I got cheap drug ads and ads for various sexual enhancers but that seems to have stopped a couple months ago.

If the cleaning crew is surfing the web at night (they are employees that suppliment their income by cleaning the office and have access to passwords etc.) and they veiw sites is that downloading? I understand that deleting your browsing history doesn't really delete it. If one of our people took an office computer to the shop, who would be guilty?

Thanks for any help.

Signed a middleaged middle manager.

Mr. Citizen1:

You are either a clever troll with a sense of humour or find computers not friendly. Either way, I'll play.

Downloading: Computer Science=To transfer (data or programs) from a server or host computer to one's own computer or device.

Do I win?

"I understand that deleting your browsing history doesn't really delete it."

What about those "eraser" tools, some of which are "free" online. Anybody know if they're worth a toot? el clicko to see what I'm talkin' about.

Roger, thanks.

Computers are definately not freindly to me.

Here is a question. Is it ever safe to buy a used computer? Short of cruching the harddrive ala Huckabee.

If you buy a computer from your uncle pervy and then take it in for repair, is that dangerous?

A couple years ago while on the Buffalo River I found a waterproof disposable camera floating in a weedchoked eddy. It had 27 shots but only 11 had been taken. Our group finished out the shots and I was going to take it to Target to get developed. My wife said what if there was some kind of illegal stuff on those original shots? Maybe a meth lab or kiddie porn?

I took it to Target under an assumed name then waited a couple weeks. They had a self serve picture pick up so I could look through them without involving a clerk.

They turned out to be a group of, let's say "hefty" and generally unattractive bunch of women.

I figured that I did pay to get the original 11 printed but I didn't have to pay the upfront cost of the disposable camera so I came out all right.

We did learn from the pictures that a normal size canoe can hold a whole lotta woman without sinking. Also I am not much on fashion but I can spot a fashion faux pa when 400 plus size ladies wear a "wife beater" T-shirt, they need to try not to splash water on it. That would be for a community service.

durangokid,

My knowledge of the subject is dated and confined to the user not administrator category. The Disk Operating System (DOS) Bill Gates bought from a developer, Seattle Computer Products, a product called Q-DOS or 86-DOS, It became MSDOS and in later iterations Windows, Windows NT, Windows XP and Vista.

It is significant because it allowed data to be written to disks and read from disks. But data grows old or out dated and must be erased. Originally, files were written with an eight digit name.

DOS "erased" these files by changing the first digit to "?." Then when DOS "read" the digit for available locations to store data the files with first digit "?" were no longer read as files and new data could be written over the old file's data storage locations. However, someone with patience or programming capabilities could examine the "disk" (8" floppies, 5 1/4" floppies, 3 1/2" micro-floppies, hard drives, tape drives, zip drives etc.) and recover the data as long as new data had not been written over the original location or "sector." Our operating systems are more sophisticated, faster and larger capacity today, but the normal erasure is very similar to 86-DOS or Q-DOS and as you note, we all have erasure recovery programs built into most operating systems. From what I have read, UNIX and Linux Systems utilize similar methodologies.

Peter Norton made the first commercial data recovery utility available with "Unerase." He also provided "Wipefiles" and "WipeDisk" which were supposed to overwrite every specified storage location in a file or disk with new information.

However, hackers, FBI IT recovery specialists and above all the NSA spooks were able to pull up data from previously written disks using sophisticated methods to read the residual magnetic bias stored with the first writing. The only "sure-fire" methods of erasing once written data are to "Huckabee" (physically smash into pieces) the disk and ensure the pieces are disposed of in various unknown locations, burn or melt the disk in extremely high temperatures until it is totally melted or turned to ash, and (this is rumour) subject the disk in various physical orientations to an extremely strong magnetic field (AlNiCo or electromagnet) with random fluctuations of strength and polarity.

The programs you speak of will prevent lower level IT techs or Users from recovering the erased data, but if the IRS, FBI, smart hackers and especially NSA want to recover your data, they can and will no matter how you try to eradicate the data or encrypt it.

If you're interested in the abilities of government agencies to break erasures and encryption read the historical references in the article. Click

Thanks Doc.
After a couple of my older friends were confined to bed for their remaining lives they began a porn crusade, that is, spreading it to everyone. After having downloaded a few dozen of their naughties and realizing some of those women were too young lookin, I just saved what I needed from my files and put in a new hard drive and did a Huckabee on the old one.

You can save just about all the websites you've bookmarked and email addresses. My specific working files have unique file extensions so they were no problem. I backed them up regularly anyway.

.

Many thanks, docholliday. Good info. Don't have a thing to hide here, but just wondering how and if those things work. My opinion has always been that if it's ever been on your computer, it'll always be on your computer. So, I try to be v-e-r-y careful about what I download or open.

Doc, are you a lawman? A friend who works in IT at the U told me the local cops bring computers to her to find incriminating files. I'd bet that a bunch of students know how to do it too, but don't have access to the software needed. Lots of people can find out whatever you've downloaded, whatever you've stored, anything you've opened or saved.

Just don't do anything naughty, or, as one of my former bosses once explained company computer policy, don't do anything your momma wouldn't approve of.

Whoscrumdown,

Not since the mid seventies when I stood shore patrol in Nice because I could speak French and Italian.

I'm just someone who was enamoured with the PC and went overboard because of the advantages of WordProcessing, Spreadsheets, Databases and Computer-assisted Design/Drafting for the small design office.

When I got my graduate degree, there were no PC's and you were forced to learn Fortran to be able to use the University main-frame. When the IBM PC hit the market (1981), I bought one immediately and became a self-taught IT tech to learn the hardware and software. You had to be self-taught then.

The best (most computer-educated) salesman at the Tulsa Computerland was two weeks from selling used Firebirds and Camaros. He didn't know what a hard drive or dual display was and he though CAD was a shortened nickname for Cadillac. But I probably overdid it, but "you can't make use of it if you don't understand it and the capabilities."

I remember using Compuserv and delighting when the ARPANET began and a friend taught me how to access. While the programs were less developed then, they were still expensive, especially for a new graduate surviving the Savings and Loan failures. We learned by buying used hard drives at Oklahoma State equipment auctions and sales, that many had the $4,000 and $5,000 programs on them so you could access the programs and learn what they did and how to do it.

That's why I learned the DOS file "read and write basics" and file recovery. Plus being a 'Nuke' in the Navy with clearances, you heard some things about crypto and the NSA wonks. Back then the PC's were not cross compatible Programs that would run on Sanyo or Toshiba would not always run on a PC. For several years, PC clones were cheaper, but less usable.

So I became somewhat of a computer nerd and stayed there. But the internet is a vast entertainment and information source for me now. I may not be better informed, but I am most certainly more entertained.