Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: treesplease on April 22, 2012, 04:47 pm
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I'm now on TAILS, but I started logging onto SR via the Tor Browser in the beginning.
How do I remove Tors and SR from my computer short of wiping my HD?
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Honestly i would just go all in and do a full DBAN wipe to be safe.
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There is software that will 'wipe' certain files by writing over them a number of times. I wouldn't put my full trust into this though, because if your computer has moved things around recently, which it may do when defragmenting or something like that, then that file may have been written to more than one place.
When you delete a file, the operating system does not erase it from the drive, it just marks it as available space and hides it from you. So, if the files were moved around on you computer at all, it may be on your HD still, so the best thing is to do a DBAN wipe, as prawl said.
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I just deleted the tor browser folder and archive. I ran ccleaner. Defragged the hard drive, go back to ccleaner under tools you can wipe the free space only option. I used advanced overite (3 Passes ). Should be good enough. If your that paranoid just do the dban thing and spend all day reinstall OS and all other software......Have fun ! You ever wonder how much other incriminating shit you may have on your computer?. I'm sure alot of us here have illegally downloaded music or movies ? Your worries about a little folder called tor browser ?
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I'm now on TAILS, but I started logging onto SR via the Tor Browser in the beginning.
How do I remove Tors and SR from my computer short of wiping my HD?
Yes, this is a key point of TOR. Its designed to anonymize you to the places you connected to and any one snooping on your internet traffic. if your hardware is confiscated, they can potentially dig up the website history, maybe some of the things that were cached by the browser. Tor bundle deletes these every launch, but forensic analysis might recover it.
The easiest way to get 99% secure is to create an encrypted user account (os x or ubuntu is best). Keep the tor bundle inside that user account (by default the downloads folder is within the user space, but the applications folder might not) on os x there are 2 applications folders, one for the whole system and one in the user account space. I just put everything on the desktop of my secure user account (bookmarks, passwords).
The bitcoin wallet is also stored in the user space, but not necessarily the app (Bitcoin is a multi-user app used for all user accounts unless you secure it to the applications folder in the user space). but i'm not worried about getting caught with a legal program.
Use a strong password to encrypt this user account. 3 Word passphrases that are at least 10 digits, best b/c they are easy to remember and impossible to break. examples: fishreallysmell or bigfatsausage.
Don't forget to logout as soon as your done. You don't want to be caught logged in with all the stuff essentially in the clear.
If you use windows, and can't stop, i suggest you install a visualization program and run a secure operating system. Such as virtualbox or vmware (both free), create an encrypted VM. Install Ubuntu. Create encrypted user account during install. (now you have 2 layers of encryption). Very easy to back up the VM to a disk or even to dropbox or some other online service. b/c its 2 encrypted you can even store it in the clear.
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You can download a program called eraser its free, it will erase data securely and overwrite it several times so it cant be retrieved