Evidence Eliminator

Last updated
Evidence Eliminator
Developer(s) Robin Hood Software
Operating system Windows [1]
Available in English
Type Privacy
License Proprietary software
Website http://www.evidence-eliminator.com

Evidence Eliminator is a computer software program that runs on Microsoft Windows operating systems at least through Windows 7. [2] [3] The program deletes hidden information from the user's hard drive that normal procedures may fail to delete. [4] [2] Such "cleaner" or "eraser" programs typically overwrite previously allocated disk space, in order to make it more difficult to salvage deleted information. [2] In the absence of such overwrite procedures, information that a user thinks has been deleted may actually remain on the hard drive until that physical space is claimed for another use (i.e. to store another file). When it was offered for sale, the program cost between $20 early on [3] to $150 later. [5]

Contents

History

Evidence Eliminator was produced by Robin Hood Software, based in Nottingham, England, up to version 6.04. [3]

Controversy

There has been controversy surrounding Evidence Eliminator's marketing tactics. The company has used popup ads to market the program, including claims that the user's system was being compromised. [6] [7] [8] In response, Robin Hood Software produced a "dis-information page" addressing these concerns. [9] Radsoft, a competitor to Robin Hood, criticised its operation. [10]

On June 1, 2005, Peter Beale, one of the "Phoenix Four" used Evidence Eliminator to remove all trace of certain files from his PC the day after the appointment of DTI inspectors to investigate the collapse of MG Rover. [2]

In a 2011 case, MGA v. Mattel, a federal court found that a former employee used the program to delete information that he was accused of giving to MGA while employed at Mattel. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buffer overflow</span> Anomaly in computer security and programming

In programming and information security, a buffer overflow or buffer overrun is an anomaly whereby a program writes data to a buffer beyond the buffer's allocated memory, overwriting adjacent memory locations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BIOS</span> Firmware for hardware initialization and OS runtime services

In computing, BIOS is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process. The BIOS firmware comes pre-installed on an IBM PC or IBM PC compatible's system board and exists in some UEFI-based systems to maintain compatibility with operating systems that do not support UEFI native operation. The name originates from the Basic Input/Output System used in the CP/M operating system in 1975. The BIOS originally proprietary to the IBM PC has been reverse engineered by some companies looking to create compatible systems. The interface of that original system serves as a de facto standard.

A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening, renaming, copying, moving, deleting and searching for files, as well as modifying file attributes, properties and file permissions. Folders and files may be displayed in a hierarchical tree based on their directory structure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intellivision</span> 1980s home video game console

The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984, Mattel sold its video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors, eventually becoming INTV Corporation. Game development ran from 1978 to 1990, when the Intellivision was discontinued. From 1980 to 1983, more than 3.75 million consoles were sold. As per Intellivision Entertainment the final tally through 1990 is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 million consoles sold.

Spyware is any software with malicious behavior that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's security, or other means. This behavior may be present in malware and in legitimate software. Websites may engage in spyware behaviors like web tracking. Hardware devices may also be affected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mattel Aquarius</span> 1983 home computer

Aquarius is a home computer designed by Radofin and released by Mattel Electronics in 1983. Based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor, the system has a rubber chiclet keyboard, 4K of RAM, and a subset of Microsoft BASIC in ROM. It connects to a television set for audiovisual output, and uses a cassette tape recorder for secondary data storage. A limited number of peripherals, such as a 40-column thermal printer, a 4-color printer/plotter, and a 300 baud modem, were released. The Aquarius was discontinued in October 1983, only a few months after it was launched.

Claria Corporation was a software company based in Redwood City, California that invented “Behavioral Marketing”, a new form of online advertising. It was founded in 1998 by Denis Coleman, Stanford MBA Sasha Zorovic, and engineer Mark Pennell, based on work Zorovic had done at Stanford. In March 1999 Jeff McFadden was hired as CEO and Zorovic was effectively forced out.

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives: build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

Data remanence is the residual representation of digital data that remains even after attempts have been made to remove or erase the data. This residue may result from data being left intact by a nominal file deletion operation, by reformatting of storage media that does not remove data previously written to the media, or through physical properties of the storage media that allow previously written data to be recovered. Data remanence may make inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information possible should the storage media be released into an uncontrolled environment.

File deletion is the removal of a file from a computer's file system.

Data loss is an error condition in information systems in which information is destroyed by failures or neglect in storage, transmission, or processing. Information systems implement backup and disaster recovery equipment and processes to prevent data loss or restore lost data. Data loss can also occur if the physical medium containing the data is lost or stolen.

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as programmatic advertising.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baidu</span> Chinese web services company

Baidu, Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services, headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market, and provides a wide variety of other internet services such as Baidu Baike, iQIYI, and Baidu Tieba.

In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Family Tree Maker</span> Genealogy software

Family Tree Maker is genealogy software for Windows and Mac that allows the researcher to keep track of information collected during research and to create reports, charts, and books containing that information. The software was originally developed by Kenneth Hess of Banner Blue Software, which was purchased by Broderbund in 1995. It passed through the hands of The Learning Company, SoftKey, Mattel, and others before coming under its current ownership. A redesigned Family Tree Maker 2008 was released on August 14, 2007. The 2009 version of the program corrected some of the errors and omissions of its predecessor, and introduced a few new features. Family Tree Maker 2010 claimed to further enhance the radical redesign and be more powerful and feature-packed with faster navigation and quicker load times.

Anti–computer forensics or counter-forensics are techniques used to obstruct forensic analysis.

Micromarketing was first referred to in the UK marketing press in November 1988 in respect of the application of geodemographics to consumer marketing. The subject of micromarketing was developed further in an article in February 1990, which emphasised understanding markets at the local level, and also the personalisation of messages to individual consumers in the context direct marketing. Micromarketing has come to refer to marketing strategies which are variously customised to either local markets, to different market segments, or to the individual customer.

Data erasure is a software-based method of data sanitization that aims to completely destroy all electronic data residing on a hard disk drive or other digital media by overwriting data onto all sectors of the device in an irreversible process. By overwriting the data on the storage device, the data is rendered irrecoverable.

shred is a command on Unix-like operating systems that can be used to securely delete files and devices so that it is extremely difficult to recover them, even with specialized hardware and technology; assuming it's even possible to recover the file at all. It is a part of GNU Core Utilities. Being based on the Gutmann method paper, it suffers from the same criticisms and possible shortcomings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile device forensics</span> Recovery of evidence from mobile devices

Mobile device forensics is a branch of digital forensics relating to recovery of digital evidence or data from a mobile device under forensically sound conditions. The phrase mobile device usually refers to mobile phones; however, it can also relate to any digital device that has both internal memory and communication ability, including PDA devices, GPS devices and tablet computers.

References

  1. ↑ "Evidence Eliminator". Archived from the original on 2007-10-05. Retrieved 2007-10-05.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Report on the Affairs of Phoenix Venture Holdings Limited, MG Rover Group Limited and 33 other Companies Volume 2 Chapter XXIV" (PDF). 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 6, 2012. Retrieved December 27, 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 "So, Robin Hood Software / Evidence Eliminator actually gone for good this time?". Archived from the original on 2020-11-30. Retrieved 2020-11-22. Runs on Win7 [RS for that], Author is in UK witness protection [not RS for that, but cited RS could be checked]
  4. ↑ Evidence Eliminator. Product Information Archived 2006-07-04 at the Wayback Machine , retrieved 19 April 2008.
  5. ↑ "Archives". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  6. ↑ When Is An Ad Not An Ad? - Internet-Marketing
  7. ↑ "ICQ Lies Update 131 - 136". Archived from the original on 2006-10-26. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
  8. ↑ Ads Play to Users' Privacy Fears Archived 2013-12-21 at the Wayback Machine - Wired News
  9. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20030216044138/http://www.evidence-eliminator.com/dis-information.d2w Archived copy of Evidence Eliminators Dis-Information page
  10. ↑ http://radsoft.net/resources/software/reviews/ee/a6.shtml Archived 2008-11-21 at the Wayback Machine Radsoft: The Evidence Eliminator Documents - Charging Windmills
  11. ↑ Judge: Bratz Jurors Can Hear Evidence on Computer Tampering Archived 2024-05-24 at the Wayback Machine , retrieved 11 June 2008.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.