I recently went from FireFox to K-Meleon.

I run a program called Ccleaner that cleans temporary internet files,
history, cookies, index file etc. It seems that this program is tied into
FireFox and does not recognize K-Meleon. It's a good program and I need
to keep it. If I uninstall FireFox and Ccleaner and reinstall Ccleaner
I don't know if that will fix the recognition problem with K-Meleon.
In the process I'll lose all bookmarks in FireFox.

I have 3 browsers on my machine:
Internet Explorer (which I must keep)
FireFox (which I would like to uninstall)
K-Meleon (which I want to keep)
Running Windows Vista Business

Help needed for a perplexed user.

K-meleon handles a kplugin named Privacy which does the same thing.

Tools > Privacy > Settings

A+

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Mozilla/5.0 (x11; U; Linux x86_64; fr-FR; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Ubuntu/12.04 K-Meleon/76.0

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Web: http://jujuland.pagesperso-orange.fr/
Mail : alain [dot] aupeix [at] wanadoo [dot] fr

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Ubuntu 12.04 - Gramps 3.4.9 - Harbour 3.2.0 - Hwgui 2.20-3 - K-Meleon 76.0 rc

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2008 12:33PM by JujuLand.

@jps - Removing Firefox and reinstalling CCleaner will not cause CCleaner to default to K-Meleon. So, save yourself some time. As was indicated above, you can accomplish the same thing in K-Meleon by going to Tools-Privacy-ClearData.

You can do it with ccleaner

Set ccleaner to erase any custom files or folders of your choice

At the bottom of the "windows" list in ccleaner
check "custom files and folders"
Then go to "options" followed by "include" and browse to
C:\Program Files\K-Meleon\Profiles\default\Cache

Likewise you can select a custom file like history and K-m will generate a new balank one next time you launch it.


The advantage with ccleaner is that you can set it to various degrees
of secure erase to overwrite data

Quote
Arrow
At the bottom of the "windows" list in ccleaner
check "custom files and folders"
Then go to "options" followed by "include" and browse to
C:\Program Files\K-Meleon\Profiles\default\Cache

How do I put all the items in The Privacy plugin, into CCleaner's Custom Files and Folders to be erased? I've put the cache in using Arrow's example but I don't see the other items in Custom Files and Folders' K-Meleon folders?

ccleaner has folder and file erase function
For the cache you browse to it with Add folder function and it erases the contents as you have already done.

For history and cookies you browse to them using Add file button. they have those names

To find them - easy way is to right click on K_Meleon program file folder and run search or look at bottom link in this post.

I don't use official version so can't remember if they are txt or dat files or both - just erase any you find and new ones will be regenerated next time you start k-meleon

This is a bit crude for cookies because it erases the lot you can't select which ones to keep.

Flash Cookies also need erasing you can do this securely with
ccleaner also, on xp they are in your user application data folder in macromedia folder. I see them both in macromedia.com subfolder and shared object folder

Read this about flash cookies ccleaner is mentioned in the comments below
http://blog.itsecurityexpert.co.uk/2007/12/hidden-flash-cookies.html


Any secure eraser with a custom file folder option will do that job to an extent however BcWipe is far better than ccleaner because it also remove file names from the mtf table and cleans file cluster tips and the swap file, but it ain't free.

Basically you can overwrite files with many so called "secure" erasers cleaners but they leave the files names to easily be read by even simple recovery software like disk investigator freeware http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.html

But obviously in time much data and traces of it gets overwritten by everyday usage on a pc

The swap files also needs securely erasing - so on and on it goes


Address Bar url mru's are stored in pref.js but obviously you can't delete that file.
when you clear those you are deleting text from within a file, I think it would be rather hard to recover those deleted mru's as opposed to recovering an entire .txt file that has been deleted without overwriting.

See here for passwords etc
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?1,80143

Freeware to spot flash cookies but it doesn't look like it overwrites them it just deletes
http://www.maxa-tools.com/cookiedown.htm



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2008 03:43AM by Arrow.

history.dat and txt exists - one is history one download history. cookies.txt.

& cache files. You may want to use the shredder function of external apps like ccleaner. If not: K-Meleons native functions can sanitize. For all files when K-Meleon regenerates a file with the same name info cannot be restored normally,
e.g. MRU history is taken care by editing inside a file that continues to exist.

So for the cache files ccleaner might be good and for other files as intermediate.

p.s. Some Windows make shadow copies - I do not know how they can effect cleaning.

Look also into this recent thread.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2008 11:43AM by guenter.

My CCleaner v2.10.618 shows it secure deletes whatever is in these flash files:

C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\GFK36R9E\twitter.com\flash\twitter_badge.swf\OdeoPodcastPlayerColors.sol 65 bytes
C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\#twitter.com\settings.sol 81 bytes
C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\settings.sol 434 bytes

If you're running CCleaner and you want Secure file deletion, the only option worth choosing, IMHO, is Gutmann ( 35 passes ). Anything less and you might as well run Normal file deletion.

As I said above ccleaner doesn't delete files names from mft table or data from cluster tips.

You don't need guttman - 35 passes takes forever

Research indicates includig my own that it is how well the overwriting process is conducted by the software not the number of passes.

ccleaner is fine if you aren't that bothered - i use it a lot.
Depends what it is I'm erasing

Dear Arrow

Re: > ccleaner doesn't delete files names from mft table or data from cluster tips<

So which programs do so (remove file names from MFT & data from clsuter tips) ?

Thanks!

Frank

OOps - Sorry Arrow - I see you did mention BCWipe - are teher any others that do this on WIndows XP/ Vista ?

Frank

Eraser removes data from cluster tips. Don't know about MFT.

Quote
Roger
Eraser removes data from cluster tips. Don't know about MFT.

Eraser removes data from cluster tip area, Master File Table Records, alternate data streams, directory entries and clears paging file ( swap ) at shutdown. Overwrites free disk space also.

You can also check how well things have been overwritten with the demo version of file recovery

(the download link is provided without you having to check your email to get it ]

http://lc-tech.com/software/frwindetail.html

It will allow you to search for and view what it finds - but not save



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2008 03:06PM by Arrow.

Quote
Arrow
You don't need guttman - 35 passes takes forever...

Yep, erasing a 200 GB hard drive using guttmann takes awhile.

You could go on holiday

Here are interesting reads on hard drives and data recovery.

http://www.actionfront.com/ts_dataremoval.aspx

http://www.actionfront.com/whitepaper/Drive-Independent%20Data%20Recovery%20Ver14Alrs.pdf


The links were posted on this thread from Wilders
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1233973

Quote

If one is worried about information remaining on a drive for any reason, virtually any approach that overwrites that file space one or more times should yield the same result, and overwriting more than once is simply wasted effort.

What isn't always addressed by this step are all the locations on that HDD where information derived from that file, either in it's entirety or simply via the filename or metadata, may be transiently located and eliminated by a classical file deletion. Unless those locations are also actively wiped, information remains resident on the device and can be harvested. 35 passes or 4,206,309 passes isn't the real issue, one pass will do it. Unhandled residual copies of information (in free/slack/file system zones) is where the focus should be if you wish to have something to dwell upon.

I agree with most of that but personally I do not agree with one pass being enough - I tested and could find partial remains of a few test files ranging from text to avi - including recovering some readable text itself.

Two passes did the trick!
But I use three, but not with CCleaner unless its miscellaneous nothing stuff - I don't use CCleaner for erasing personal documents,
It also depends on the file size of what I'm erasing, if it's small then I'll bump up the setting to gutmann for that added "feeling" of security



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2008 03:08PM by Arrow.

I downloaded Eraser and ran a 1 pass erase mode on my free disk space and Master Files Table (total: 68 G. The 1 pass took 1 1/2 hours. Then I ran a 7 pass mode on the same areas. Seven pass took 9 hours. I wasn't willing to try 35 passes. Thought 35 passes might break my laptop's Western Digital hard drive.

If it is not broken already... or weeks until the disaster...

Quote
JohnHell
If it is not broken already... or weeks until the disaster...

I've read desktop hard drives are designed to run continuously, although I don't know what their life expectancy is with such usage. I've never read anything about laptop hard drives life expectancy with continuous usage, but I imagine there are people who use them in such manner. A Western Digital hard drive on my desktop failed 2 weeks after the warranty expired. Since Maxtor bought Western Digital, I'm hoping the quality has improved.

Well, the biggest enemy for HDs is the temperature and the voltage and, believe me because I already load some HDs for hours, with that activity the HDs, if you are not in a cold room or put a fan in front of them, reach easily over 45º what is potentially critical, not for the temperature itself but the combination of activity and heat, as any temperature over 40-42 is already bad as manufacturers recommendations.

Imagine now a laptop HD, that is smaller and with hot spots surrounding it without chance to cold down...

For what you was searching with that erase I recommend using PGP or GnuPG. Is way faster and secure to wipe single files.

Maxtor was, and maybe is still, the worst brand for HDs... so... and one of the best considered was WD. In the other hand, your WD died so soon and my Maxtor is still alive after 4 years or so. It has a potential spinning problem but it was my fault with the connector I used. Anyway, HDs is lotto. Maybe work for years, maybe die so soon :/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2008 12:14AM by JohnHell.

The index file you are talking about is the index.dat for IE, this has nothing to do with Firefox...

CCleaner doesn't clean out anything related to Firefox, firefox cleans its own temp files when you close the browser if you set it up in the options to do so, you don't need ccleaner to do this...

K-Meleon also cleans up it's temp files on shutdown or startup if you set it.