dirty likes his porn but now needs a good washing

dirty will be leaving thailand soon and his laptop has visited a lot of porn sites.
dirty never intentionally looks at underage stuff nor does he save pictures
but he is paranoid because even when he does not wear a raincoat
customs guys tend to tAKE ONE LOOK AT HIm and hear thailand and give his laptop a thorough search. have asked him how old some of the "models" are
dirty does not know how to remove stuff from his computer so he brings it to a shop to do it for him but he understands that that does ot neccesarily remove all traces.

dirty does not like police authority people etc and does not fancy going to jail or being publically branded .

what can dirty tell the shop to make sure they delete enough so that he will not get into trouble?

thanks

[Aunty]

You need to buy and run this programme (especially the internet trace destructor) often.

http://www.steganos.com/en/products/sss ... tdsss2006/ (http://www.steganos.com/en/products/sssse2006/features/shredderanditdsss2006/)

The only way to remove tracks is to remove and replace your hard drive.

Get a watch with storage - USB port. they never check those ;-)

[Bob]

For those that don't know....shouldn't be many....deleting a file the usual way and even then emptying your recycle bin only
effectively removes the easy link you have to the file (i.e., there's nothing for you to click on to find the information, photo, or whatever). Those deletions just send the digital information (e.g., a photo) to the free space on your harddrive and there are many programs that can retrieve/find the photo (including programs that some customs agents have).
Shredding and wiping programs simply replace all the zeros and ones (how digital information is stored) with random zeroes and ones and, because most harddrives are rather big these days, it usually takes a long time. There are some standards of security, the old standard DOD (Department of Defense) standard is that you do this wiping/shredding 9 times in repetition. If you have 40 gigs of free space on your computer, that might take 6-18 hours to do depending on the speed of your computer.
I have no idea if a repetition of 9 wipes/shreds actually makes the information irretreivable to a police agency looking for what you have on your harddrive (there are programs they have that look specifically for photos). The only 100% safe thing is not
to have ever had illegal photos on your harddrive.
There are many free (shareware) wiping/shredding programs on the net.
As to covering other tracks (wiping out history, urls, cookies, etc.), I'm not so sure that there's a big worry there as, while that might stir the interest of a cop seeing what sites you've visited, that information on a harddrive is probably not illegal (but, if they see that, the safe bet is they are going to be very thorough with the rest of their search).
This same information is true of all digital media - including all of the media you use for digital cameras. If you took and then erased an improper photo, it's still on the digital media and can be found fairly easily (when I've screwed up one of my compact flash or smart media cards or I have mistakenly erased a photo on one of those, I can normally recover about 80-90% of what's been lost with a media recovery program I got somewhere on the net). I don't get too paranoid about it, though, as I've never had anything on my media that could get me in trouble (of course, I'm presuming the photos in the Sawatdee album are not illegal as I'm sure there's a few of them hiding in my free space).

further question - am i being paranoid?

as i said i like porn and tend to quickly click on popups and links that come off including for twinks when i am in that mood.

i never knowingly look for underage, but i also do not have the birth cirtificates of the thousands of guys that i have looked at.

police do tend to take an interest in me.

should i junk the computer? IF SO, IS REPLACING THE HARD DRIVE ENOUGH?


i really appreciated the great answers, i was afraid that i would be hit by responders.

DOM

[Dodger]

Dirty...

You may consider just leaving your laptop at home and using an Internet service. They're cheap, always within walking distance, and you don't have to lug the thing around with you.

You may also consider leaving that compulsion you have for surfing sex sites at home when you come on holiday. Enjoy getting the real thing for a change...it's much easier on the eyes.

mai pen rai

[Smiles]

Dirty, you might want to check out this thread on the GayThailand Message Board: http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/index ... wtopic=205 (http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=205)
Some interesting posts on the same subject.

Cheers ...

boy george i have been honest with you. I do not get singled out cuz i am gay i do not come across that way.
i get singled out for my personality.

is it enough to replace the hard drive?

boy george i have been honest with you. I do not get singled out cuz i am gay i do not come across that way.
i get singled out for my personality.

is it enough to replace the hard drive?

Talking to boygeorge is like talking to your left shoe - a waste of time.

[Bob]

Dirty, yes, replacing the harddrive is the maximum you need to do (no digital information that you download or install is stored in any other part of your computer). But hope you don't have to do that as there goes everything!

Generally, you don't need destroy a removable hard drive or the info. on it to remove it. Why not just switch to a fresh clean one before you go and put your old dirty one with all the goodies back when you return?

Try a free download program called BCWipe it apparently cleans all the free space (deleted files) on your hard drive. You can also completely clean a hard drive if you have brought a second-hand computer before you start using it. This program is also useful for deleting files that once wiped will no longer be recoverable. That's what the write up tells you!

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Util ... CWipe.html (http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/File_Cleanup_Utilities/BCWipe.html)

if you feel you may have inadvertantly visited any illegal site I wouldn't take the slightest chance.

I've been stopped and searched by Customs twice in 2 countries and they go through things with a fine tooth comb..searching hard drives, dvds and now cell phones including finding my Thai cell sim card and checking that.

The insidious nature of spam is that anything could be planted deep within your computer without your kowledge and the increasing hysteria that now surrounds the porn industry is getting worse. You could be busted fo something you have no knowledge of. The madness of a this is that any illegal material can be sent across the world in a second or stored on host web sites to be acessed later without a person ever having to carry it..and I cannot see how this will ever be stopped unless the entire internet comes under government control.

I'd be interested t hear whether these "wipe" programs really work..supposedly the only way is to completely wipe your hard drive and re-load programs like Windows from scratch.

But if in doubt..surely the relative cheap cost of a new hard drive is not important.

Customs might not show so much interest in you guys if you didn't wear your "Amigo Pub Sunee Plaza" t-shirts while in transit.

boygeorge and his classic ..."if you have nothing to hide etc etc" crap is exactly the sort of thinking that allows authorities to get away with murder (literally).

As he comes from that bizarre country where most men wear dresses he should know that Thailand does indeed host many Australian Federal Poilce who are one of the nastiest bunch of goons around and make US legal people look like boy scouts. They have a history of vindictively targeting people as they did with the well known Bangkok Aussie tourist agent who was forced to leave Thailand for having copies of a Thai gay magazine available in his office..the same magazine that was available in 5 star hotels throughout Thailand.

With trolls and fools like that around..you are now well advised to not travel with your laptop , or get a new hard drive fitted when you get here. Alternatively the internet cafes in Thailand can actually be good fun and even a source of social life. Watching Thai boys and girls and their cam talk to farangs around the world can be very amusing.

nb: Oggleman's is trying to be helpful but Custom's people everywhere know about all these new tiny storage devices. It really depends where your homeland is and what their laws are. One problem I've found is that by being honest and declaring you have goods as I always do ( like medications) simply invites the buggers to go to town.

[Aunty]

I think the safest bet is just don't travel with a laptop if you're visiting places like Thailand. And when you think about it, why would you want to travel with a laptop anyway - more so if you're on holiday! OK if you're on business you might need a laptop, but if it's the company's laptop and you have porn on it - well hello! Last time I looked that was a no no, no matter where you came from.

lol at Pearl. The classic Australian man-frock. The mind boggles!

Very good Dirty thread. I was wondering exactly the same.
My maid showed more than just a passing interest in my Apple lap top, so I offered it to her. However it is full of personal info even old correspondence, things she need not know about. Will a clean install of a new operating system clean it out completely?

I just realised I did a very stupid thing and this thread made me think about it. When I was going through customs in Thailand I found a camera memory card on the floor, you know what curiosity is like, and these cards are expensive, so I slipped it into my bag and went on through passport control. I have no idea what is on it I will look tonight. I could have been searched, never have been, but if they found the card and it contained all of some dirty git's stuff I may been in deep trouble. :whax:

but also an unbelievably stupid thing as well. The card may have been ditched for a very good reason and you wouldn't have had a hope of talking your way out of it.

Be warned also..there is now talk that the memory on digital cameras cannot be entirely wipe and is recoverable and that material, photos etc create by digital means leaves "fingerprints" that can be traced back to the original source..I have no idea if this is true but you can be sure authorities world-wide simply cannot bear the idea of completely free access of information whether it's porn or smething else.

a cautionary tale : an acquaintance of mine was set up by a rival who sent him an innocent email to his business computer from an unknown source that contained business secrets encripted within a photgraph..and then informed his employers. The battle he had to keep his job took an enormous toll upon his health.

Big relief, I had visions of Thai prisons and indifferent family visitors throwing the odd luxury like food through the bars.
The card is empty, at least it has no images on it. I think it is one of those you get free with the purchase of a camera, people throw them away near duty free, they have hardly any memory capacity they usually buy another at the same time. Only 64MB and brand new.

Article I read recently said laptops have become thieves targeted item. They often haunt airports and grab them from travelers hands and have snatched then from under the owners fingers in restaurant & other places with internet connections. Two men who resisted were shot. In the leg but still a nuisance.

Other stories.
Gangs choke elderly tourists until they pass out, then take their valuables. This has happened in daylight on busy streets.
Old trick back again. Two or three Pattaya boys on motorbikes; one snatches the gold necklace from the neck of someone walking near the kerb. If the victim is lucky, the chain breaks. As they zoom off snatcher passes it to one of the other boys and they all scatter. This also has happened in daylight on busy streets. If you must flaunt the bling or cloclo stay well away from the kerb.
Maybe there is an advantage to being frumpy?

There are various programs on the market that wipes the hard drive clean. One I use is WipeDrive. It erases ALL data from your hard drive. It complies with the US Dept. of Defense Security standard. What it does is completely over write the entire hard drive with one & zeros and can be set to do this numerous times. It does require that you then reformat the hard drive when you reload Window. The down side is that one looses all data and must reload all software. If you have a laptop you probably have installation software that came with the computer and will make the setup less painless than loading everything from scratch. I do this periodically anyway to clean off my computer when it starts to bog down some and run slower. There are programs that clean up things but I don't have as much confidence in them. Like a previous poster said, seems foolish for customs to be checking this type of thing when one can simply create an email address on Yahoo and send to himself.

yes but does it really work ??..is there anyone on here who knows if this is a sure fire deletion method ??

Internet shops in Pattaya can be such fun..leave the laptop at home.