15-Minute Reviews :: East-Tec Eraser 2007 v8.5.0.137

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is East-Tec Eraser 2007 version 8.5.0.137 by EAST Technologies = An application to securely erase your sensitive information off your drive; Empty space, files or folders or information your computer saves on you.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“East-Tec Eraser 2007 protects your privacy, identity and confidential information and removes all evidence of your computer and online activity. Eraser exceeds U.S. Department of Defense standards for the permanent erasure of digital information when erasing your Internet history, Web pages, pictures, unwanted cookies, chatroom conversations, confidential documents you want to get rid of or files deleted in the past.”

Quick Pros

• Interface easy to use
• Support for large range of applications in Privacy Guard
• Fast wiping for what it must do (1-35 passes, depending on which method you choose)
• Did not break my system performing file/folder wipes and Privacy Guard
• Contextual menu so that you don’t have to fumble with application to erase
• Selection of a wide-range of overwrite methods, or create your own

Quick Cons

• Caution really needs to be taken with ‘Privacy Guard’ – Example: WinAmp wants to wipe your winamp.ini file by default
• Not quite sure when running privacy guard that a shell script pops up in the first place
• Too many options could be dangerous for light computer users
• Would have been nice to have a ‘Erase Application’ function

Expansion

While generally most people don’t feel they have the need for an application, the truth is that everyone could use a properly-working version of this application. All it takes is one malicious person to come onto your system (remotely or physically,) to take criticalinformation. A computer thief could walk away with more than your system on a ‘break and enter.’ With this said, I must always preech my words of caution: ANYTHING that alters your system in any level needs to be used carefully. If you are not a person who backs up frequently, you are toying with fate and even moreso when you choose to use applications like this. My biggest concern with this application is that if there is even slight registry or FAT corruption, you’re going to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

I found the application had a decently-clean interface; For how many options and setting there were, it was generally easy-going. I could not figure out however the first time I ran Privacy Guard why a shell window popped up with scrolling information flipped up for a brief moment. While the interface was easy-going, I did find myself even getting overwhelmed when I hit the advanced page of the Privacy Guard. While it is great to see it supports pages upon pages of applications, for anyone except an advanced computer user really needs to be careful here – There is no explanation on the potential for data/settings loss when you use this, which in my opinion is a major downfall – Each file should be at least flagged with a tag, such as ‘Non-critical file, settings/data file but holds private information, etc.’ and allow you to see a short description on each file. This really needs to be in place. I was going to wipe my WinAMP information for an application data to wipe on that list. However, when it prompted me over which files, I immediately spotted my winamp.ini file – It does contain potentially-private information, but it also hosts all of your WinAMP preferences which would end you with having to redo a bunch of stuff on your next WinAMP launch. Some safety and security needs to be placed into Privacy Guard to help protect against things like this. In all actuality, there is too much control available to the basic user and can end up being a bad story for sure. Really, ‘Advanced’ features should be only able to be turned on through a menu setting or similar, to try to prevent accidents.

I did run Privacy Guard on 7-pass and it worked well on what I had it work on – I didn’t break anything that I can identify based on what I let it access at. I also had some PhotoShop .tmp files which have been bogging down my hard drive. I decided to use those as a benchmark for speed. When I wiped these, they did not break anything else – A good thing for sure. Now, I know some people are going to have complaints about the default ‘DoD’ setting for overwriting. Something you must keep in mind is that the time to overwrite will be directionally proportionate to the height in security you choose. You choose the 35-pass setting to erase your empty space, you are going to be in for an extremely long wait. For many, 3-pass may be a good option for full erase.

Now, coming to mention the level of overwrite, there is a lot of options here, ranging from single pass with or without verification, all the way up to ‘DoD’ and the ultimate 35-pass write/verification. If the overwrite settings aren’t to you your liking and you have a bit of experience with overwriting, you can even build your own multi-pass technique as well. The aspect that there are a lot of overwrite options is handy, because you can decrease the amount of time for doing operations like deleting folders or empty space wiping. It will help speed: Writing your empty space over and over 35 times can be a VERY painful; Say you have 100GB free, that would be the equivalent of writing over 3TB (Terrabytes) of data! You need to decide on level of protection versus time constraints.

Also handy is the contextual menus in Windows Explorer – It’s easier than firing up the application and adding the file, and it auto-terminates once it is done deleting (And don’t worry, by default it prompts you to make sure you want to erase it.) It also does not appear to chew up a significant amount of memory in Windows Explorer when using either.

One aspect I do wish may be adopted by an application as this one is functionality to work as an uninstaller – As in, you can choose to uninstall an application, and you can choose what to wipe totally (Including the Local Settings folder, registry entries and so forth. It would be very handy – Ensure you get rid of all of your loose data from an application.

Final Verdict

With any system-altering application as like this application, I always must offer a word of caution: BE VERY CAREFUL. I may have had a good run, but someone on Giveaway of the Day is likely to have something already slightly wrong on their system and end up with a massive failure. Anytime you run an application like this, back up first! No substitutions for backing up before you do anything.

That said, this application is actually pretty easy to use (minus the potential pitfalls of the Privacy Guard that needs to be closely watched when used.) While I do not have the equipment or facilities at this time to check to see if it did it correctly on a hardware level, it appeared to work fine. While free, if you have the need (or are worried about data theft,) I would grab this and just use common sense, caution and a good backup. For $49.95, it is a good application, but with how insecure Privacy Guard can be, I would say it is really a call of ‘how much is your data worth to you in someone else’s hands?’ $49.95 is a bit to chew off, but if you feel it is something you can not do without, it might be an idea. It appears to work (No complaints quickly looking on the internet for comments like ‘Hey! It didn’t do anything!’ and I couldn’t find anything for this application.) You may want to shop around however – There are other solutions out there; Eraser is another alternative.

Posted by BladedThoth on Friday, May 25, 2007