New EFF privacy tool
p2pnet.net News:- Is someone collecting personal information about you?
Could be, but the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) believes it can help.
It points out that computer network servers can automatically log information about who’s visited a website and when, or who, has sent and received email. Obviously, this can reveal a lot about a user’s browsing and email habits and could be used in privacy-invasive ways.
But worse, “log data must be turned over to government entities with court orders and can be subpoenaed by opposing sides in court cases,” says the EFF
Enter Logfinder, conceived by security consultant Ben Laurie and written by EFF staff technologist Seth Schoen.
Intended to complement the EFF white paper Best Practices for Online Service Providers that argues administrators should remove as many logs as possible and delete all personally identifying data, Logfinder tells sysadmins when their servers are collecting personal material and lets them turn logging off if it isn’t gathering information necessary for administering the system.
“People who choose to follow our recommendations in the white paper might not know what kinds of logs they have,” says Schoen.
“Logfinder is an example of one way a system administrator could become aware of the presence of logs, as well as discover sensitive information being collected in known logs.”
You can download it from the EFF here, and just in case, we’ve also put a copy here.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
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See:-
Logfinder - EFF Announces New Privacy Tool, EFF, February 7, 2005
February 7th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
Speaking of privacy and logging of internet activities, anybody know of a way to clear the index.dat files that XP creates in the cookies folder? Short of a full reformat this file keeps a permanent record of every web page visited (even after cookies and “history” are deleted). You can replace it with an “empty” file in pre XP windows OS by booting up in DOS. Haven’t figured how in XP. There’s nothing incriminating (that I know of so far…) in there but that kind of thing just bugs me.
February 7th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
use the wininit.ini file go to google and search for wininit.ini and XP.
basically, this involves creating a file called wininit.ini C:\Windows directory.
In this file, there needs to be the following line
[rename]
then under that you need a line such as
NUL=C:\Progra~1\index.dat
The short filename system must be used in the path and filename because wininit.ini is executed whil still in real mode.
one way to get the complete path name is to open a dos window by by executing the command, cmd
In this dos window, you can cd to the correct directory using the long file names.
once you are in the correct directory, type in the word command
you will notice that the path contains all shortnames. this is the pathname you want to use
February 7th, 2005 at 10:59 pm
Use Window Washer by Webroot Software.
It “bleaches” the index.dat file & has different levels of “washing,” from user denominated wipes to DOD level to NSA & up.
February 7th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
You’ll find that in the “Wash Items” section under “Browsers.” It bleaches on Windows startup. U can designate it to bleach manually everytime WW washes internet crud. I know people who’ve tried to unearth info wiped to no avail. Great program.
February 7th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
I’ll give ‘em a try.
February 8th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
Is Windows washer free and/or opensource? This would be the only way that i’d trust it.