Need some advice from those more computer-savvy than I (i.e. everyone)

[bigbeard61]

I've been using a laptop owned by my employer for the last three years, which has often been my only computer during the week, and thus I have used it extensively (outside of work) for personal purposes. I also have generated a lot of professional material. I will be needing to turn in this computer when I leave this position next month. Now,

Comments

[urbear]

Just uninstalling Chrome and Mozilla may not remove your browser tracks. Before you remove them you should go into the browser's options and tell it delete everything. In Chrome you do this by clicking the wrench symbol at the extreme right of the toolbar, then choose Options / Under the hood, and click the "Clear browsing data" button. I don't know what the equivalent is in Mozilla but is shouldn't be hard to find

[jacked01]

agreed, do a back up and format the drive. then turn it in

[andybr]

um stick it next to some big magnets???

[mllefifi]

"Deleting," as I understand, simply removes the pointers to the pieces of a computer file, but not the other information it contains. That means the data can theoretically be recovered.

You may want to use a program that will overwrite any of your data files (images, word-processing, bookmarks, etc.).

I use Eraser. It's free: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

As far as I know, the file names still need to be in the directories before you use Eraser, so don't "delete" the files first. Eraser will do that.

[fingertrouble]

THIS - you want to use something that either writes junk all over your old files so they can't be reclaimed and/or something that's a secure eraser as it's called on Mac - I'm sure there are PC ones that do same, it encrypts the file and then erases it - or puts encrypted trash data over the top of where the file was...basically even if they find the file, they need to unencrypt it which without a key and strong encryption means basically they won't unless they have a spare couple of years or 100 years to waste.