Epinions.com March 26, 2004 by ivplay Original on the Epinions.com
Privacy important to you? Check out Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0
Rating: 5/5
Have you ever wanted to cover your tracks on your computer? Keep your wife/roommate/employer from seeing what you are looking at on the web? Eliminate files completely, forever? Completely wipe that hard drive you replaced and were going to sell? Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 can do all of this, plus a whole lot more.
Brief OverviewAcronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 is a software application with multiple solutions, all geared towards keeping your actions on a computer private. I downloaded this suite for the specific task of wiping data from hard drives to sell, as I am in the process of upgrading. I found so much more that the software can do, including: — Deletes temporary files from preconfigured Windows folders — Cleans the Recycle Bin — Delete custom folders/files as you choose — Clean/Wipe hard drive free space — Delete Find Files and Find Computers list — Delete Internet Cache — Delete cookies — Delete downloaded components — Delete email messages and/or contacts list from Outlook or Outlook express — Clean opened/saved file history — Clean up Last Visited Pages and Typed URLs Lists — Delete Forms Autocomplete and Password Lists for websites that require authorization — Pop-up blocker utility — Spyware remover — Clean up Paging/Swap file — Destroy all data on total hard disk or partition There is a lot packed into this $39.99 full download or $24.99 upgrade! The main differentiator for this privacy suite in comparison to competitive products is that Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 comes with 8 preset algorithms for destroying data. When you delete a file with the Windows delete function, it simply changes the file name to make it unrecognizable to the file allocation table system. The data is still there, although it is designated as free space. In the future your software may write over this data and reduce the chance of recovery of the data. If this does not occur, the data is still there waiting for someone to extract it. Think of all of the information you have on your computer; do you want others to see it? The preset algorithms range from fast to very thorough, and the chances of recovery are reduced directly proportional to the length of time it takes. In other words, if you want to overwrite the data 35 times, it is going to take longer and be more secure than if you only overwrite it 1–3 times!
System requirementsAcronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 requires that your computer has the following: PC-compatible computer with a Pentium CPU or similar 32 Mb RAM VGA monitor a mouse (recommended) Windows 98 / Me / NT (including Server) / 2000 (including Server and Advanced Server) / XP / 2003 Server operating system installed
InstallationI downloaded the software from the Acronis website, which is: www.acronis.com The download is a 16.8 Mb executable file, so it only took me a few minutes with my cable modem. I chose to save the executable file to my "My Downloads" folder just in case there was a problem with the installation. During the installation, the program will cue you to enter in a 25 character registration key as well as create a bootable diskette or CD. This bootable CD will allow you to use the Disk Cleanser that I will discuss later on a PC without having to load the entire software suite. I did not install a floppy drive for my computer, as I see no real need for them anymore with jumpdrives and bootable CD's, so I tried to burn a disk using my Plextor PX708A DVD/CD-RW. This is where I ran into my first (and one of few) problem with this software; the software does not recognize the Plextor as a writable disk, and therefore will not allow me to select it for creating a bootable disc. I am currently working with the email customer support to determine if there is a workaround, but so far no luck. Once I cancelled out of the disc creation wizard, the installation went very quickly. The user guide is loaded onto your system in a PDF format, so you do not miss much by not purchasing the physical box.
Using Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0Once I had the program loaded and had printed off the user guide (60 pages, all well written!) I started to play around with the different features.
InterfaceThe interface for this program is one of the best software interfaces I have used. It is intuitively laid out and "pretty". As a matter of fact, it looks very, very similar to the standard theme for Windows XP! The screen is situated with the main interface to the right and a sidebar to the left. The main interface to the right has four main clean-up selections, which are: — Entire PC Clean-up — Internet Clean-up — System Clean-up — Spyware Clean-up Selecting Entire PC Clean-up and clicking Start Now! will run all three of the other main selections in succession. Below the four main selections is an area where each of the Internet, System and Spyware Clean-ups are broken down into their individual variants so that the user can choose to run one specific tool at any given time. The sidebar has many of the same choices, along with the other tools that ship with the suite. These include Popup Blocker, Paging File Cleaner, Drive Cleaner, Bootable Media Builder, and File Shredder. Below I will touch on each of these. Also present are a graphical toolbar as well as a text tool bar. You can make any selection three ways at least, which makes it very easy for almost anyone to use.
Internet Clean-upThe variants included in the Internet Clean-up tool are: — Internet Cache Clean-up — Cookies Clean-up — Downloaded Components Clean-up — Last Visited Pages Clean-up — Typed URL's Clean-up — Passwords Clean-up — Forms AutoCompleteClean-up — E-mail Messages Clean-up — E-mail Contacts Clean-up The internet clean-up selections work with Outlook Express, Outlook, Internet Explorer versions 4 and up, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla browsers. It is pretty straight forward from the names what each variant does, and I have the E-mail Messages and E-mail contacts variants turned off for my home computer. For the Downloaded Components, Typed URL's, Passwords, Forms Autocomplete, and Cookies variants you can choose which items you want to protect. In that way you will not have to fill out all of the information for sites you frequent, and you will not have to download ActiveX elements frequently. I have done this, and the program works very well to clean out the rest. I did mention that I have the email contacts and messages variants turned off. I did try them out, as my wife and used to use Outlook Express and switched to Outlook. After exporting the messages and contacts to Outlook, I never did go back and delete the file for Outlook Express. I used the wild card filtering to delete certain email addresses and messages, and then finally used the tool to completely eliminate all of it. The software did a wonderful job in both cases, but I do not think I will use these variants typically. The Internet Cache and Cookies Clean up can choose a data destruction method to delete the information. The remaining do not offer that option, so I imagine that it uses typical Windows delete method, which is not as secure.
System Clean-upThe variants included in the System Clean-up tool are: — Recycle Bin Clean-up — Temporary Files Clean-up — Hard Disk Free Space Clean-up — Custom Folders/Files Clean-up — Find Computers List Clean-up — Find Files List Clean-up — Recently Used Documents List Clean-up — Windows Run List Clean-up — Opened/Saved Files History Clean-up Now why in the heck would you need a Recycle Bin clean up and Temporary Files clean up tool? You can simply run disk cleanup from Windows and accomplish the same goal, right? Again, Windows delete does not actually delete the files, and all of the information you thought was gone is still retrievable. Using the variants of the System clean up, you can choose your method of destruction and ensure that the data is not retrievable again. Hard Disk Free Space, Custom Folders/Files, and Recently Used Documents List variants also allow you to choose the method of destruction while Find Computers List, Find Files List, Windows Run List and Opened/Saved Files History Variants do not. Again, I assume that the latter four utilize Windows delete function which is less secure, but still does the job. The Hard Disk Free Space is interesting, as it destroys all data occupying free space. As described above, Windows delete does not actually destroy the information, but rather makes it inaccessible from Windows. The data is still there until that sector is overwritten again, so the risk of your secure information being found is still there. This variant will actually destroy the data on the free space of the partition using one of the methods selected. It seems to me that a defragmentation of the hard drive followed by a Free Space Variant run would be a good way to ensure the best operation and security of your disk. The remainder of the variants do pretty much what their title says. With several of these variants you can select items to protect as well, thus not deleting them with the other items in the list. I have all of these variants set to run once every three days, just to free up the space on my drive and keep it performing optimally. I do not need to dump the information for a privacy reason, as my wife is the only other person who uses this computer right now. However, I still wonder how much information others' on the net can see, and what they may choose to use, so it does give some peace of mind as well that this information is not waiting to be viewed.
Spyware Clean-upThe variants included in the Spyware Clean-up tool are: — Spyware Parasites Clean-up — Browser Pages Hijacking Clean-up — IE Trusted Sites Clean-up The spyware parasites clean-up tool is not something that I use extensively, as I run Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware 6.0 once a week on a scheduled task. However, I did run this tool prior to running both of these free programs, and it did find many spyware elements. I still had the other two programs run, and they didn't find anything missed by the Acronis tool. The one problem I saw with this tool is that while it did find and stop the parasites from running, it did not delete them. Therefore, the next time I booted the computer they came back! With spybot and adaware, it would either delete or quarantine the parasite, stopping it from reloading itself later. Have you ever had your browser page hijacked? That occurs when you go to a website and all of a sudden it is your new homepage, search page or default page! This happens to my father all of the time, as he does not run a firewall program. This variant will remember what your pages are and reset them if this ever occurs to you. This is difficult for a layperson to change back, as it can often be buried in the windows registry. Finally, the IE trusted sites is a built in security feature of Internet Explorer. You can build a list of sites which you trust and therefore allow to load on your browser. Programmers have figured out how to get around this by adding their sites to your trusted site list! This variant will automatically remove all sites from the trusted sites list, and can be tailored to leave some in for you and remove any new sites.
Other tools
Acronis Pop-up BlockerAcronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 comes with a pop-up blocker utility that can be tailored to suit your needs. I currently run MY IE2, a skin for IE with a built in pop-up blocker. In addition to this, I have the Google toolbar which has a built in pop-up blocker. I turned both of these off to see how well the Acronis worked, and I ended up keeping the Acronis over the other two! (Note: if you want to know if you have a pop-up blocker, go to Omaha.com. There are plenty of pop ups there, and you will soon know!) The reason I like the Acronis blocker is that you can easily classify popups into white lists and black lists. The first time a pop up is blocked, it will put it into a Blocked URL's list. From that list you can choose to send it to the white list, where it will be allowed to popup in the future, or to the black list where it is denied. This is useful as I often go to sites with "friendly" popups, such as my banking site and BestBuy.com. If the popup is classified as white, I do not have to disable the popup blocker each time as I did with the Google toolbar and MyIE2. Great, eh? This is not a tool that would justify the purchase of this software, as there are free ones available. However, for a "free" addition to this already robust software package, it does work good and has some good options and interface. The Acronis Pop-up Blocker puts an icon in the system tray, making easy access to the interface. It also runs a text message on the bottom of your explorer window to let you know when a pop-up has been blocked! One item of note is that pop-up ads are a dying breed, as Microsoft has announced that their next version of IE released with Longhorn will have a built in pop up blocker sent enabled. Therefore several ad creation companies are switching to "media enriched" ads. Hopefully Acronis is working on a blocking tool for these ads as well, as they will replace pop ups soon!
Acronis Drive CleanserAh, the main reason that I downloaded this software! When, say, selling your PC, you might want to securely wipe out its partitions, remove data from them and make it unrecoverable. Acronis Drive Cleanser allows you to either clean up a selected disk or partition using preset methods or create and execute a custom method of hard disk clean up. When cleaning up a selected partition, you can choose to do one of the following: — Leave Partition As Is: destroys the data on the partition, but nothing else. — Delete Partition: Destroy data and delete partition — Format Partition: Destroy data and format partition The last is the default setting. I used the Delete partition and the strongest form of data destruction, and it took quite a long while to finish! I deleted the information off of a 40 Gb hard drive, and then was able to sell the drive with no fear of giving away secure information. I have not used the software to create my own method of destruction, as I do not think I am smarter than those individuals who have already created great algorithms.
Paging file clean-upDid you know that a portion of your hard drive is used as RAM when the RAM is not large enough to contain all of the data necessary to feed your processor? Rather than bottleneck your computer, the OS will create a file on the hard disk to store temporary data, and this data can be extracted and used! The paging file clean-up will destroy the information contained in the page file, thus eliminating the risk of that data getting into the wrong hands!
File ShredderFile Shredder is a program which will allow you to destroy completely files and folders. You can access this through the context menu by right clicking on any file in an explorer window, or by opening the program and choosing files manually to destroy. This is a useful and handy addition to this edition of the Acronis Privacy Expert.
Technical SupportI have been working with tech support via email(which can be accessed at support@acronis.com.hk) to determine if there is a workaround to allow the Plextor to write a bootable disc. If I had this, I could use the Acronis Disk Cleanser on a computer that did not have Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 loaded on it. I may come back and report on their tech support, but so far they have exceeded expectations!
OverallAcronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 is a very robust software suite with some very nice variants. You can schedule Entire System Clean-up, Internet, System or Spyware Clean-up, or any variant within each one. The software also adds a selection into the context menu of windows to wipe specific folders or files using the Acronis file shredder. This eliminated the Recycle Bin in a lot of cases and was quicker than opening the program each time! I would recommend this for anyone who is security minded about their own PC, or wants to cover their tracks on a company PC. I am unsure how this would work to cover your tracks if a keystroke recorder was installed, but it would definitely clear the histories and other traces of your internet activity. I can also see where this would be very useful for an Internet Café, where the owners may want to eliminate any downloaded files, temporary files, or users each night. I recommended this to my friend who owns a hotel in town with a community computer for all guests, as this often needs maintenance to clear hard drive space. The addition of the pop-up blocker, hard drive cleanser and file shredder make this an invaluable package, well worth the money. I would like to see an FAQ be developed for this product on the Acronis website(there currently isn't one, but it is a new product). A user forum would also be very nice, and utilized! As far as the software itself, I would add a defragmenter to add to the utility of the program, but that would not be necessary, just something for the wish list
I hope you find this review useful, and please leave a comment and a rating if you so choose!
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