Google Search History: Even with the web history feature turned off, Google’s servers, like any web server, will likely record the IP address and some additional characteristics of each access. Naturally, law enforcement could easily request the contents of this record with a search warrant. You can turn this off, but many people don’t even realize that it’s on. Google Web History: If you are logged into a Google account at the time that you perform your Google search, it’s possible that your search is recorded in your Google Web History, an online record of everything that you’ve searched for.Cookies: If you erased these with your browser, CCleaner, or other tools, then law enforcement could certainly make some implications about some of the sites or pages that you’ve visited.All of your keystrokes could be recorded and saved on your machine or sent elsewhere over the internet. However, if you have spyware on your machine – whether it’s simply malicious malware or intentionally placed by parents, law enforcement, or others – then, all bets are off. Spyware: As I mentioned at the beginning, Windows does not store all of your keystrokes somewhere.While that can be securely erased with the appropriate steps, it’s not necessarily the only way that law enforcement might determine that you’ve been searching for a specific topic. I’ve focused on the history file here as an example of the most obvious trace left of your website visits and search queries. On top of that, you’d need to select “multiple passes” in order to avoid the possibility of recovery by magnetic media analysis.Īnother common tool for this is Secure Delete, a command-line tool that can securely delete specific files or wipe the free space of a drive. It’s not until you then use the “Drive Wipe” utility in CCleaner to overwrite all free space that the space previously occupied by the history would be overwritten. That means that the contents of the deleted file could potentially be recovered with appropriate software. 1 Really removing traces of dataĬCleaner and tools like it can completely erase files, but they often do not by default.įor example, if you delete history in CCleaner, that’s simply a file delete without any guarantee of overwrite. I have no idea if a history file was used in the case that you mention, but my guess is that law enforcement was motivated to put in a lot of effort into the process. So, if a history file was deleted, there’s a chance that it could still be recovered, depending on a) how much the computer has been used since the delete, and whether or not data has overwritten the space that was previously occupied by the history file, and b) how much effort you’re willing to put into the recovery.
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