E-mail can be unearthed from your computer, even though you've trashed it and run special software

06/22/99

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

Simply deleting e-mail and other sensitive files will not rid them from your computer - or your life. Just ask Monica Lewinsky and Bill Gates.

The president's former paramour and Microsoft's chairman have suffered in recent legal skirmishes because government investigators resurrected damaging correspondence thought to have been zapped and flushed from their computers.

Experts say deleting a file in normal fashion only removes a pointer - an indicator of the file's location on the hard disk - and frees up hard disk space for eventual reuse. The data remains. With modern operating systems, chunks and pieces of many documents can linger for years in obscure crannies on a hard disk.

"The legal industry is quickly getting up to speed about how to use electronic information, and your personal e-mail messages are easily targeted. ... They really can come back to haunt you," says Mike Burmeister, director of data recovery for the international firm Ontrack.

With an eye toward cutting liabilities, many corporations have instituted purging policies, automatically wiping out e-mail kept on servers after a certain period. At the same time, computer programs for reconstructing deletions are growing in power and sophistication.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this stuff anymore," says Sam Morse, a data recovery consultant with Single Source Communications of Fort Worth. "There are utilities out on the market doing a better job of eradicating the data, but they still don't completely get rid of it."

Beyond encrypting every e-mail sent, users are left with a multitude of software choices that can make a record of their data harder to find and examine. Many slide themselves right into Windows 95/98 Explorer, adding a super delete function to the list of options. Others allow users to drag and drop sensitive stuff into an electronic shredder.

Most can wipe out the hard disk pointers and write over spots where a file used to be. But if e-mail is the main potential source of pain, these tools may not get the job done.

"We don't know of any software that deletes any e-mail so you can't get [it] back," says Mr. Burmeister.

Is e-mail indelible?

At Ontrack and other firms devoted to data recovery and security, experts say e-mail programs such as Eudora and Outlook make deletions difficult. Most of the file-wiping programs on the market today work well when directed at individual documents. The organization of e-mail programs. though, presents unique problems.

Messages themselves are often compacted inside individual mailbox files, strung together or split up throughout program directories.

An Austin firm, Infraworks, says it has developed an as-yet unreleased program that will work in concert with the major e-mail handling software to wipe out messages by subject line or sender.

"But even if they delete their entire e-mail files, we're pretty successful getting those back, too," says Mr. Burmeister.

More problems arise because copies of e-mail are often retained on company or Internet service provider servers. More lawyers involved in lawsuits these days are seeking court orders directing that server disks be secured for examination. In numerous cases, they have culled old exchanges of jokes from e-mail files and used them to help show bias in the workplace.

Even unsolicited Net tricks and forwarded e-mail can wind up in court as evidence.

"Traditionally with computers, you keep it and keep it and keep it, thinking you may need it again some day," Mr. Burmeister says. "Business-wise, it's good common sense and a good practice in general to keep e-mail cleaned up and in order.

"You don't want skeletons in the closet."

If the legal beagles can't find what they want on the office machine or a server, they may come knocking on your front door.

"We've seen that played out before where there's some litigation or investigation where they're looking into the hard drive at work," says Mr. Burmeister. "Then, through a court order, they gain access to your home computer."

So what can I do?

Some software titles - many of them free - make it more difficult and expensive for hard disk sleuths to get what they're after. (See the accompanying list.) Mr. Morse, Mr. Burmeister and other Web-based experts say there are some key features to study before making any selection.

First, the best are those that meet Department of Defense, or "government wipe," standards. For example, Norton WipeInfo, a part of the Norton Utilities suite, allows users to select a "fast wipe" function, replacing deleted data areas on the hard disk with zeros or other characters. Norton WipeInfo's "government wipe" option, though, makes seven passes across each deletion. It takes longer but is generally more effective.

One of the most popular downloads on the Internet is Shredder Lite by Infraworks, which overwrites files and file names as many as 12 times with a combination of characters selected by the user.

Shredder Lite contains other desirable features. It can be set up to monitor Internet browser files such as cookies and cache, then shred them when the computer is shut down. Shredder Lite also has a Panic System that allows the user to delete previously designated directories at a single keystroke "in the event of sudden intrusion," in the company's words.

Infraworks is also developing the unreleased program ShredMail, a utility for Eudora, Outlook and other common mail handlers. The company says ShredMail will overwrite e-mail so completely that "original content cannot be recovered by any utility such as those used in legal discovery proceedings." This year, Infraworks also plans to release a server-based program whose purpose is to destroy all copies of e-mail within a domain.

BCWipe, a free program for Windows 95/98 and NT, is touted as able to root out every semblance of an unwanted file - even those cached in swap files used by the computer to temporarily store items in use.

"Every time you open an e-mail, people don't realize their computers are storing those messages in temp directories," says Mr. Morse. "General consumer utilities can find and reassemble those, too."

Mr. Burmeister says users too often forget to destroy attachments that may accompany e-mail. To help keep clean out attachments, many mail programs now simultaneously delete the attachment when the message is purged. Special settings may be required to take advantage of that option.

Experts also recommend that people selling their computers use a program to overwrite all the data on hard drives. In day-to-day deletions of e-mail and potentially dangerous files, programs that feature the most "passes" during overwriting offer the best security, they say.

"But I think people need to understand that, in the world of computers, security is not as strong as they've been led to think," says Mr. Morse.

So what's the best advice for dealing with highly sensitive correspondence?

"If you want to make absolutely sure," he says, "just don't use a computer at all."

SOFTWARE FOR DESTROYING FILES

Although security experts agree that obliterating files and e-mail is next to impossible, some programs make it more difficult to retrieve the information. Here are a few that have received high marks from Internet software review sites.

SHREDDER LITE

Infraworks Corp.

1-800-308-5825, www.infraworks.com

A $35 program for Windows 95/98 operating systems

BCWIPE

Jetico Inc.

358-3-316-5215 (Finland)

www.jetico.com

A free program for Windows 95/98 or NT

DESTROYIT

Business Logic Corp.

519-763-2097, www.blcorp.com

For 486-or-better computers running Windows 95/98 or NT; $29.95

BURN 2.5

Next Wave Software Inc.

www.thenextwave.com

(no phone number available)

Requires an Apple Macintosh running at least System 7 with 200K of disk space and 400K of RAM. Contact company for System 6 application. Free.

EAST-TEC ERASER

East Technologies Inc.

40-59-126586 (Romania)

www.east-tec.com

This is a shareware program for Windows 95/98 or NT. It's free to try, but you have to pay $19.95 if you decide to keep it.

WITHOUT A TRACE

Karmadrome Software

karmadrome.prohosting.com

software/wat.htm

(no phone number available)

A free program for Windows 95/98.

FILE SHREDDER 98

Lushann Technologies Inc.

1-800-427-2770, www.lushanntechnologies.com

Another shareware title for Windows 95, 98 or NT. Try it for free; keep it for $12.

- Doug Bedell