The issue of illegal downloading has been quite a hot topic in singapore lately. From the much debated ODEX case last year, to the recent ACJC students incident, the signs of authorities tightening their grip on internet intellectual property rights control has stirred up much commotion in town, setting many guilty souls worrying for their safety.
Many ppl are wondering with how the authorities can manage to catch them downloading illegal stuff even after they have deleted everything from their computers.
The answer is simple: All the downloaded stuff were never erased from your computer hard-disk when you deleted them.
Why?
This is bacause all the icons you see on the computer are not the actual data, but actually a short-cut, or link which points to the actual address of the data on your hard-disk. When you download something, windows will physically write these data on the hard-disk, and then create a link to these data in the form of an icon. so the icons you see are actually nothing but simply a link to what you want to get to ultimately. And everything you see on the computer are icons. eg: ( lalala.mp3, hahaha.zip, "new folder"... everything u see!!! )
Therefore, when u delete an icon, you are simply removing the link to the data, but the physical data is still on the hard-disk. but u cannot get to the data, because the link is no longer available, so your windows system will tell you dat the data could not be found, because it does not know where it is when you delete the link.
However, u can still find the data, if you use some programmes to read through your hard-disk, byte by byte, and you will ultimately find the data.
Erm-herm, so dont let me get my hands on your hard-disk, its easy for me to find out what porn websites yo have visited and what porn videos you have watched!!!
if i can, so can the government.
and if u ask me, how to really remove those data from your computer completely?
yes, there is a way, the only way.
( no other solutions unless you wan to consider burning your hard-disk to completely destroy it. )
the only safe way to remove data is by overwriting it. when you overwrite a piece of data, you are corrupting the data. You choose the group of data, and tell your hard-disk writer to erase the data and write something else over it. hence the previous data is completely being replaced by something else.
this is a only way to get rid of the evidence of your visit to those porn sites!!!
and by the US national security standard, you will need to over-write the targeted data 3 times to be considered safe. and the US military information security standard, its 7 times.
there are many free programme online that help you to overwrite unwanted data. try find some for your own security.
oops, i side-tracked too much. back to illegal downloads.
if u still remember the odex incidence. the company ODEX, the sole anime distribution of SEA which hacked into the comp of many and scanned their hard-disk ILLEGALLY to find evidence of them downloading illegal anime online, and then take these illegally obtained evidence to our IPS ( Singnet, starhub, pacific ) and request for a record of their online actitivies, and later sent letters to the victims extorting $5k fine each person claiming dat they have record evidence to their illegal downloads. but in the end, they plan backfired with a group of enraged expertise pressing charges against ODEX for illegally hacking into other ppl's computers to get the information, and they they illegally extort money from these ppl as they are only in charge of distributing the anime, they do not own the intellectual property rights to the animes. since the really owners companies did not do anything to the illegal downloads, ODEX as merely the disbutor have no rights to pursue the case.
and recently some ACJC students were caught using P2P programmes to download stuff using school wireless network. one student from my computing class was caught too =/
and not forgetting the case of many NUS students being caught and charged in court for downloading music in school campus some 2 years back.
now you know dat not only hackers will hack your computers rite?
legal companies too hack your comps, and even government bodies, to check on you to see if u ahve been doing illegal stuff.
are you now equally worried for your own safety? why do you have to if you have been abiding the laws? hehe
well, we all must protect ourselves.
1st: install a good anti-virus, to your comp safe from malwares. others many hide malware on your comp which will send information of your comp without your knowing.
2nd: install a good firewall system, to prevent others from establishing a connection with your comp and access information on it. do not rely on windows firewall, its useless to even the most amature hacker. and do you know dat all p2p programmes like limewire or emule opens ports to your comps to others and allow them to access your comp? and windows system itself has many loopholes, professional can hack into your comp without using p2p programmes. there are simply too many ways to hack.
3rd: use a data overwriter to delete your unwanted data.
4th: install programme regulator to help u control what programme u want to run on your comp, so hacker programme on your comp cannot autorun without your knowing.
for anti-virus, try avast. its free, and its a professional level programme, easy to use, use little memory, daily auto update on list new viruses, run in background( no pop ups ), and very reliable. AVG also not bad. Norton and PC-cilin sux.
for firewall, try peerguardian 2. free, user-frenly, use little memory. daily auto-undate on list of hacker and government body IP address( not only rat hackers hack your comp, some companies hire professional hacking companies to hack into your comp to check if u have downloaded their company stuff illegally, and government too hack into your comp to check on you, for various agendas ). peerguardian will block all those suspected IP when they try to access your comp, and it also shows you a record of IP that accessd your comp.
and on average, when you are connected to internet, even when you are not doing anything, not even using internet explorer, about 100 IPs will access your comp. u still think you are very secured? just dat u didnt know.
for data overwriter, the file shredding function with DAP 8 is good enough.
for programme regulator, try zonealarm. it will show stop any programme dat try to run on your comp and show warnings.
and lastly, i will talk about your home wireless network. i know many have told you to lock and secure your wireless network rite? because not only dat these ppl are freeriding onto your network and sharing your bandwidth and causing your internet access to be slow, they may also do illegal stuff using your network and get you into trouble.
but let me tell you this, this idea is stupid.
u think you network is safe after your locked it with a password?
now let me tell you dat i can crack your password within 5 min.
u just type "crack wireless system password" in google, and u will be instantly offered 101 ways on how to get your hand on the password of any wireless network u want.
and now, ppl are using your network to do anything they like when u still thinks dat u are very safe.
and when police checked down on your network, you have nothing to defend yourself. u locked your network, no-one else but u can use the network. so u r the only possible culprit for the misdeeds. and u will bear the full consequences for the illegal actions done by something else. scapegoat scapegoat.
so u should always open your network for public use. so if anything happens, u just say dat ur network is open, all the bad stuff is done by someone else.
if u r worried about shared bandwidth slowing your internet, u can assign a main stream of bandwidth to your own computer address, leaving only a small amount of bandwidth for others to use. or, u can use parallel pipeline when using internet. the more seeds u connect to, or the more connections you establish with the destination server, the large the portion of bandwidth you will take.
maybe i will teach yoou how to do dat next time. im kinda tired now.
internet is never a safe place, if u do not know how to protect yourself.
yawnz, i go orh orh le...
