Evidence Eliminator - What has your experience been?

[Lightening]

I use Evidence Eliminator to clean my drive/surfing history, etc  on a daily basis.  I have used it for about a year.  I purchased it after my credit card had been compromised.  I figured I needed some extra protection.  I only buy on-line from reputable places but my credit card number was stolen anyway.  I don't have any porn or anything dubious on my computer and I don't go to those sites so I'm not worried about the wife or law enforcement.  Recently, my credit card number was stolen again.  Both times the bank removed the charges and reissued the cards.  Last time the bank said reputable vendors can have their sites compromised.  This time, it was on a different bank, and they said the bad guys have software generating credit card programs and when they get a hit, they use it until the cards are cancelled.  Evidence Eliminator  www.evidence-eliminator.com ; looks impressive and appears to do great things.    So my question is, does it really work?  Has anyone had any experience with using it? 

[f0dder]

Hm, "software generating credit card numbers"? Sounds like bull to me, since you need expiry date, card number, security code, and in some cases even the cardholders name.

I've never¹ had my VISA exploited due to online shopping, phishing, keylogging or whatever, it's just not very likely to happen if you stick to reputable sites. And your credit card information shouldn't be stored at the shopping sites either once the transaction is done, except for stuff like one-click purchase at Amazon.

It's more likely that a waiter at a restaurant have carbon-copied your card details, imho.

Evidence Eliminator doesn't seem particularly useful to me, it's more of a thing you'd use if you were borrowing somebody else's computer, or if you were a sneaky person hiding things from your wife, etc. If your computer is compromised, it won't help you. If a remote shopping site is compromised, it won't help you either.

1: it was, however, physically stolen once, and charged for USD~150, online purchases. Bank canceled the charges, dunno if the police dismissed the case because it was such a petty amount, never heard from them anyway.

[mouser]

Just speaking from my memory of this program, I think i remember that it is a reasonably good program [see SKA's links below].

HOWEVER!!!

It is insanely priced and looks like they are marketing it as something special.  It's really just one of a lot of tools that do the same basic thing, none of which are anywhere near that price point.

And the web page is really hyping it.. But notice there is no forum, no information about when it was last updated, etc.  I wouldn't consider buying it myself.

For a similar free program: http://www.ccleaner.com/
And also: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

[mouser]

As f0dder says, your circumstance as you describe it, is not going to be helped by this program.  It sounds like you have a different kind of problem.. someone is getting hold of your credit card in some other way -- using this program is not going to solve that.

ps. Even if they are getting it from your computer, it's not through any means that this program will help -- it's more likely to be because you have some trojan program or something installed on your computer, which this program will not find -- you are better off making sure you have a good antivirus tool.

[tomos]

dunno whether this is already covered by ccleaner:

Find My Credit Card (freeware)

Find My Credit Card software is intended to show you private info, which you may not know of, and erase redundant information posing hazard to your security.

Perhaps, you have no idea that your computer may contain your private information which you have long forgotten about. These may include your credit card information, login names, passwords as well as cookie files tracking your Web surfing habits. The Find My Credit Card software finds all personal information and suggests its unrestorable erasure. Please bear in mind that no antispyware will save you from information theft. You need to be aware of what and where sensitive information is stored on your computer and purge it on a regular basis thus making information theft useless.

[nudone]

evidence eliminator - more like porn eliminator. well, that's what a friend of mine used it for when using his parents computer.

[Darwin]

There's also CleanCache, which I have used on and off for years - very good, very stable. Even allows you to secure delete data. Unfortunately, in chasing down the link for this posting, it appears that the homepage is now defunct. Still works like a charm, though...

Waybackmachine is our friend....

[Ralf Maximus]

The best advice I was ever given about credit card theft:

Assume your card WILL be lifted at some point.  It's just a fact of life today.  Use it often enough and it will happen.

So focus not on prevention but on selecting a card with decent identity theft protection.  For example, CapitalOne and American Express both have superb policies, and seem to err on the side of the customer when things get strange.

[f0dder]

Oh yeah, I always forget about the american-style credit cards, since I'm used to... debit cards? Ie., cards that are linked to a bank account with money, instead of giving you credit.

For online shopping, how about this idea: get a non-credit credit card , and link it to an account you only keep a smallish amount of money in - and make sure the account can't be overdrawn.

[Ralf Maximus]

Oh yeah, I always forget about the american-style credit cards, since I'm used to... debit cards? Ie., cards that are linked to a bank account with money, instead of giving you credit.

Oooh, I've got one of those too.  I love debit cards!  Beer runs are ever so much more enjoyable when you can tap into the main account at 2330.  :-)

Fun larceny story: About 10 years ago, some mysterious charges show up on our Amex account.  $4100 for laptop computers purchased at a store I usually buy a lot of crap from.  Needless to say, those were not my purchases.

I called American Express up to dispute the charges, and they suspended them immediately pending investigation.  I assumed some clerk at the electronics store had kept a copy of my card for personal use.  Nope!  Instead, what happened was way weirder.

Apparently somebody at work had borrowed my wife's credit card from her purse, photocopied it, then returned it.  Then went on a binge.  How did we track down the nefarious mastermind?

In addition to the $4100 laptop charge: $900 for shoes at Nordstroms, $600 for cosmetics at Macy's, $700 for ladies clothing at Target.  (Target?)  Clearly not our normal spending habits.  So obviously some super-sophisticated AI at Amex spotted the weird demographic spike and flagged it as unusual... right?

Nope.  The crazed supervillian signed HER OWN NAME to the purchases, which we recognized immediately as a co-worker.

Case solved!  They were quickly pronounced "incredibly guilty on all counts" and got the electric chair.  Actually, I never did learn what happened... as soon as Amex satisfied itself as to our innocence, the Cone of Silence descended and we were excluded.

But the co-worker in question never showed up for work again...

[SKA]

>So my question is, does it really work? <

Evidence Eliminator studied in Depth here :

http://www.radsoft.net/news/20060808,00.shtml

http://www.radsoft.net/resources/rants/20060509,00.shtml

In short MaceAnton , you've been had.

SKA

[mouser]

Wow that is an nice find SKA, the second link in particular is a real eye opener.

[f0dder]

radsoft.net... ho humm. Claiming that 740 registry entries will grind win9x to a halt and saying that no professionals use Visual Basic is enough to lower the site's credibility a lot. I don't doubt what it says about EE affiliate scheme and shoddy coding, but radsoft.net is just about as sensationalist bullshit as grc.com...

[Lashiec]

* Lashiec wants the Advanced Bullshit Wizard

Ha! I didn't know the forum software accepted IRC commands

[Renegade]

radsoft.net... ho humm. Claiming that 740 registry entries will grind win9x to a halt and saying that no professionals use Visual Basic is enough to lower the site's credibility a lot. I don't doubt what it says about EE affiliate scheme and shoddy coding, but radsoft.net is just about as sensationalist bullshit as grc.com...

Amen, amen and amen! I'm so totally 100% on board there.

There are a ton of very good applications written in VB by some very good developers. That's just showing that he's one of the religious crowd. I believe that discussion is here.

I don't know why I keep listening to the Security Now podcast... Steve contradicts himself constantly and blathers on about trivialities while skipping things that are actually worthwhile or interesting. Maybe I just derive some sick pleasure from hearing Steve say one thing, then turn around and say the opposite. His latest contradiction in this week's Security Now is how he's solved security once and for all with perfect paper passwords... All the while chanting about 'perfect knowledge on the part of the attacker.' Geez... Perfect knowledge except for this part...

I think this is just part-in-parcel of the security industry - it's just full of bullshit. There's no such thing as 'anti-virus' software. There's no such thing as 'anti-spyware' software. But there is such a thing as 'scareware'. Because that's 99% of their tactics - confuse people and scare them into buying their snakeoil. Ok - it's not all snakeoil, but a lot of it is and even the legit stuff is often marketed in the most sleazy of ways with half-truths and fear playing the lead roles.

Grrr... Ok - this is a pet peeve of mine and really gets my blood boiling. Time to shutup & stop ranting.

[Lusher]

I fully agree. The so called antispyware crusaders, e.g HJT! log helpers are the worse of the bunch.

[Carol Haynes]

Towards the bottom of the Radsoft page quoted above it says:

Eraser is a well-received product, and it's free (mostly) but it's only a shredder and doesn't take care of your Registry or anything else like that. E3, found here, does it all. And most importantly it's flexible: you create your own 'recipes' ad hoc to deal with new projects. You get an impressive array of prefab recipes, but the system is built so it's easy to make new recipes of your own.

Guess who sells E3? And guess what - E3 is $30 MORE expensive than EE. Here is a quote from the product tour:

But things go up and down, and so it was with Windows. From the zenith of Cutler's new incarnation of VMS we now have Windows XP, the worst of the bad, a directly user-hostile system with no good features and an endless stream of dangers, and its successor's already proven to be more bother than anything.

...

If you are still running a Windows box, give this collection some serious thought. Running Windows without it is a task too impossible to consider.

See: http://www.radsoft.net/products/tours/xpt/

Now who is hyping their product (which by the way was apparently ported from Unix - which tends to suggest a lot of the criticisms he lays at EE's door could probably be applied elsewhere too).

To me the whole page is pure marketing hype based on the 'ignorance' and 'fear' model so beloved of web security scams and modern politicians.

OK, let's face it, EE is crapware and should IMHO be ignored and deplored - especially as they market it on the back of pornography that could result in prison sentences. Personally I think anyone who needs EE for its intended purpose deserves all they get.

On the EE product page it says:

Did you know...  that the government and police are installing black boxes in ISPs to record your Internet surfing and downloads for evidence?

If that is the case how does EE do anything to help? In fact what they are saying is EE is totally pointless because your ISP can submit all the evidence required to get you convicted!

Maybe I changed my mind - let's all promote EE as widely as possible that way paedophiles will think they are safe .... until the cops turn up and they spend the rest of their lives living with the consequences.

Re. Credit Card theft - I have had two credit cards compromised. Apparently one of them was by a disgruntled employee of a company who stole the credit card database before they were fired. The other I never did fid out how it happened but I scanned my system and found no malware and my new card wasn't compromised using the same system. I think most of this kind of fraud happens because companies have their security compromised from the outside (like a large well known retailer admitted a while ago when they had a large number of sets of card details compromised) and the other likely reason is because an employee is dishonest. It isn't hard to imagine when you pay for something by phone or, until chip and pin became common, in shops that an employee can note down the details.

The banks are to blame too - there is a simple solution to mail order/internet/'customer not present' type credit card fraud - only allow the products to be delivered to the address registered at the bank. It is easy to enforce by making the supplier directly responsible for the financial loss if they don't do that rather than the bank issuing a refund. If you want to give gifts that are delivered to another address find an alternative payment method (such as PayPal which verifies the card holder address by sending a code via the card statement).

[f0dder]

Carol Haynes: hear ye hear ye on the RadSoft stuff.

[Darwin]

Yes - thanks for doing the detective work on that, Carol  . Throws it all in a different light!