Does Bleachbit really work?

[pussycat]

"Lessons learned" from Wikileaks publishing all of Hilary and the Democratic National Committee's emails is that email is dangerous. Don't use it anymore. One of my neighbors here in west Austin is the guy who sold the Russian Federation all their email servers and devices in the early 1990s when he worked for Dell. You know what they've done with all that equipment? They trashed it. Russian government employees have been forbidden from using email now for years.

It's looking more likely that Wikileaks received the DNC and Hilary emails from the NSA through a proxy. NSA monitored Hilary's server as soon as she set it up, and they saw all the "pay for play" bribery schemes she ran while Secretary of State. It's people in NSA who are bringing down Hilary and the Democrats, not the Russians.

NSA like most intl agencies does not volunteer to send over evidence of crimes to law enforcement. In fact even when law enforcement asks NSA for help they usually don't cooperate. There is a firewall between the intl world and that of LE. And for the people at NSA seeing what Hilary was doing they knew even if they reported it that Obama and Holder and now Lynch would do nothing but cover it up.

So the answer to the question is this. Bleachbit will hide data from LE and your spouses' investigator and lawyer. But it won't work against the NSA.

The NSA has on file every email sent by everyone everywhere in the world. It's hard to believe but they actually have accomplished that. It's not metadata mining. They actually have all the emails sent by everyone everywhere.

The Russians have the right idea.

[GneissGuy]

I wrote a long, technical response, but decided it was too much. Ask if you want details on individual bits.


-- E-mail

The NSA or other shady organizations can probably read your e-mail as you send it. Even they don't have the resources to keep it forever, or to fully monitor all e-mail.

The chance that they have your e-mails depends on a bunch of things, such as whether you're already "suspicious," how old the e-mail is, whether you used certain keywords, communicated with suspicious people, etc.

-- Bleachbit and other tools

No matter what techniques you use, there's some risk your personally damaging data can be recovered. Various techniques have various chances of success and degrees of effort required.

Deleting in windows doesn't even actually erase the data. You can often simply recover it from the Recycle Bin. Even if you empty the recycle bin, the data is still on the disk until windows wants to reuse that space. BleachBit and other tools can overwrite the data on hard disk. Once this is done, THAT particular data is essentially unreadable, even by the NSA.

One problem is that Windows and other operating systems have a tendency to leave little pieces of data at various places on your hard disk. There might be data in the page file space, the hibernation file, in the search index data, browser cache files, slack space at the end of other files, etc.

Think of it as a jigsaw puzzle. Depending on the operating system and other tools used, there are a varying number of pieces left over. You thought you threw the whole puzzle away, but various things happened. A few pieces fell between the cushions in the couch. There are a few partly chewed pieces that the dog stole and hid under the bed. Some or all of the pieces are still sitting in the trash can by the street. Or maybe the pieces are all mixed together with the rest of the trash in the garbage truck.

How much the bad guys can figure out is a function of how many pieces are left, and how much effort they're willing to spend.

In my opinion, if the data is actually erased and overwritten on the hard disk, even the NSA won't be able to read it. In the jigsaw puzzle analogy, those pieces have been burned into ash, turned into dust and thrown into the air. If they can read it, it's going to be really expensive and labor intensive.

BleachBit, done right, is going to do a really good job of destroying the puzzle pieces it deletes. The trick is how many puzzle pieces are left behind in the places that BleachBit doesn't know about.

[GneissGuy]

If you REALLY want to delete data from a disk, run something like DBAN or one of the other tools to overwrite everything. Then drill a hole through the platters.

Some suggestions here:

https://www.mypctechs.com/techclub/d...d-easy-method/

Why destroy it?

A used disk drive is usually not that valuable. There are criminals out there who get used disk drives and scan them for data they can use. ID theft, blackmail, lost business info, etc. can be very expensive and troublesome.

Once drilled, it's going to be very expensive and time consuming for someone to read the data.

I also recommend people destroy old disks when throwing them away, even if the disk has no useful data. It makes it much more difficult for the bad guys to decide which disks might be useful. Also, there might be some data you didn't know about that's somehow useful to someone.

[pussycat]

Originally Posted by GneissGuy

I wrote a long, technical response, but decided it was too much. Ask if you want details on individual bits.


-- E-mail

The NSA or other shady organizations can probably read your e-mail as you send it. Even they don't have the resources to keep it forever, or to fully monitor all e-mail.

The chance that they have your e-mails depends on a bunch of things, such as whether you're already "suspicious," how old the e-mail is, whether you used certain keywords, communicated with suspicious people, etc.

-- Bleachbit and other tools

No matter what techniques you use, there's some risk your personally damaging data can be recovered. Various techniques have various chances of success and degrees of effort required.

Deleting in windows doesn't even actually erase the data. You can often simply recover it from the Recycle Bin. Even if you empty the recycle bin, the data is still on the disk until windows wants to reuse that space. BleachBit and other tools can overwrite the data on hard disk. Once this is done, THAT particular data is essentially unreadable, even by the NSA.

One problem is that Windows and other operating systems have a tendency to leave little pieces of data at various places on your hard disk. There might be data in the page file space, the hibernation file, in the search index data, browser cache files, slack space at the end of other files, etc.

Think of it as a jigsaw puzzle. Depending on the operating system and other tools used, there are a varying number of pieces left over. You thought you threw the whole puzzle away, but various things happened. A few pieces fell between the cushions in the couch. There are a few partly chewed pieces that the dog stole and hid under the bed. Some or all of the pieces are still sitting in the trash can by the street. Or maybe the pieces are all mixed together with the rest of the trash in the garbage truck.

How much the bad guys can figure out is a function of how many pieces are left, and how much effort they're willing to spend.

In my opinion, if the data is actually erased and overwritten on the hard disk, even the NSA won't be able to read it. In the jigsaw puzzle analogy, those pieces have been burned into ash, turned into dust and thrown into the air. If they can read it, it's going to be really expensive and labor intensive.

BleachBit, done right, is going to do a really good job of destroying the puzzle pieces it deletes. The trick is how many puzzle pieces are left behind in the places that BleachBit doesn't know about.

Where are you getting this? There isn't a single source which supports your statements about NSA and emails. NSA collects ALL emails and stores them. That's now established. They have direct access to the net and need no "hacking." It's all theirs. The only issue is whether they have a reason to cull through and focus on your particular emails. If they decide they want to they just go to their archive. They do NOT share this with law enforcement. This is normal. For example, NSA has a huge task force which does nothing but monitor Chinese hacking into U.S. government agencies and companies. The NSA knows everything the Chinese government has been hacking into, but the NSA doesn't inform any American company or even U.S. government agency that they have been penetrated. NSA doesn't have a responsibility to inform anyone of anything unless asked by higher authority, which is basically the POTUS.

[endurance]

Your hard drive probably isn't the weak link.

End to end encryption is easy and will get you past mass surveillance. But of course if the NSA is already looking hard in your direction, you're fucked. It isn't clear how much you show up on their radar just by using encryption or other "shady activities" (tor etc.)

[pussycat]

If NSA has a reason to monitor you then they have you because they have direct access to the net just as LE would go to the telephone company for a tap rather than tapping you at your point of use.

But if NSA isn't watching you then all they have is all your emails and texts and the numbers and times you called. But if your emails are encripted that will be a problem for them.

[GneissGuy]

Originally Posted by pussycat

NSA collects ALL emails and stores them. That's now established.

No, they don't. Maybe some percent of them, but not ALL, and they don't keep them forever. In many cases, your e-mail provider will have copies for a while, even if you delete them. The NSA can probably get them if the e-mail provider still has copies.

Please provide info on how it is "established" that they have ALL e-mails and that they keep them forever.

[pussycat]

Originally Posted by GneissGuy

No, they don't. Maybe some percent of them, but not ALL, and they don't keep them forever. In many cases, your e-mail provider will have copies for a while, even if you delete them. The NSA can probably get them if the e-mail provider still has copies.

Please provide info on how it is "established" that they have ALL e-mails and that they keep them forever.

Sorry but I've got a business to run and don't have time to trace down the sources. But NSA built a ten billion dollar facility in Nevada which stores every email sent from anywhere on the planet. It was all over the news a few years ago when it was being constructed. There were numerous articles stating the facility was being built to store every email and store every cell phone log. The reports on it were everywhere.

[GneissGuy]

Originally Posted by pussycat

Sorry but I've got a business to run and don't have time to trace down the sources. But NSA built a ten billion dollar facility in Nevada which stores every email sent from anywhere on the planet. It was all over the news a few years ago when it was being constructed. There were numerous articles stating the facility was being built to store every email and store every cell phone log. The reports on it were everywhere.

Sorry, but you've got the details wrong. Not surprising, a lot of internet news sites, especially the nutjob ones got the story wrong, too.

[knotty man]

i tried that bleachbit...
drank the whole damn bottle, my asshole still looks the same
but, my teeth are white as fuck !!!