In today's information age, your personal information is highly sought after.  Your personal information may be of interest for completely legitimate reasons such as online banking, e-commerce, or travel.  However, it seems like everywhere you go on the Internet a person our web site is asking for all of your personal details.  Always remember that you are in charge of your personal information.  You're the one that decides whether or not an entity or web site can receive your personal information.  Another reason web sites are looking for your personal information is for marketing purposes.  Being able to add your mailing address, phone number, or most importantly your email address to a company's contact list is extremely valuable.  This is so that potential merchants mail you or email you bargains, coupons, or electronic newsletters.  However, all of these emails tend to clog up your inbox and some even come back around as unsolicited spam emails.  The best thing you can do, is the very judicious in and giving out your email address.  Remember, your email address is your personal information, and yours to protect.  For more information, check out our article: how to eliminate spam from your email inbox.

There are several things you can do to secure your PC.  Every time you browse the internet or open attachments from emails, you leave a trace on your computer - kind of like a bread-crumb trail that details where you went and what you did.  You can remove these bread-crumbs with several privacy protecting programs.  You may also want to hide certain information on your hard drive such as username and passwords to sensitive accounts (such as your bank accounts, etc.) and financial information.  The best way to secure this type of information is by encryption.

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Encrypt your Sensitive Files
First thing to do is try and keep your sensitive and personal information in one location on your computer.  This makes it very easy to back up (check out our hard drive backup plans article.) However, keeping all your files together on your hard drive also leaves you more susceptible to wrong-doing by nefarious people trying to steal your information or harm you.  Thus comes the necessity to encrypt your most sensitive files.

True Crypt is a freeware disk encryption program for Windows XP/2000/2003/Vista/Windows7 and Linux. A, more powerful version of Cryptainer.  TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g.., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).  A great feature of this software is no limits on how big you can have the drive, as well, so you could encrypt your whole drive if you wanted to. 

Confidentially Delete Files
Most people think that once they click on a file and hit "delete" that file had been removed from their computer.  Most files, when deleted, end up in your Recycle Bin which you will need to empty.  Even if you empty this Recycle Bin, many files can still be recovered wither through honest diagnostic means or by surreptitious malicious means (intruders, snoopers, foreign governments, business competitors, etc.)  To truly rid yourself of a file and to remove any trace of its past existence, you will need to use more sophisticated deletion tools than your Windows Operating System provides.  One such tool that we absolutely love is CCleaner - and it is free!

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!   As well as cleaning up old files and settings left by standard Windows components, CCleaner also cleans temporary files and recent file lists for many applications.  CCleaner also offers secure file erasing for the super cautious users.  By overwriting the files before deleting them, it becomes impossible to recover the data.  Dealing with the most important areas of your hard disk – your web browser (be it Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Opera), Windows Explorer and many third-party applications (including Acrobat Reader, QuickTime and Spybot) – CCleaner performs its duties quickly and efficiently. You specify the types of file you'd like to remove, and the program determines how much space you can save, then lets you perform the mass deletion with a single mouse-click.

Introducing Windows CleanUp!, another quick and easy way to delete temporary files from your system.  CleanUp! is a powerful and easy-to-use application that removes temporary files created while surfing the web, empties the Recycle Bin, deletes files from your temporary folders and more.  CleanUp! frees disk space and reduces the "clutter" on your computer helping it to run more efficiently. It also can be used as a way to protect your privacy on the Internet. You can even instruct CleanUp! to securely delete files making it impossible to retrieve their contents using lower-level disk tools - just another way of protecting your privacy.  No gimmicks here, CleanUp! is so easy to set up and use that you'll have a lean, clean, mean machine in minutes.

Steganos Locknote - This is an application and document in one: the mechanism to encrypt and decrypt a note is part of it. Secure, simple, independent. No installation required.  It appears as a simple text file and opens to look just like a file in notepad.  The only difference is that the contents are encrypted and secure.  And you can have as many of these different "Locknotes" on your computer at one time.  A great place to secure your username and password combinations since the file is encrypted, lightweight, and no delay in loading.