my my my AW...first you state that "imaginary super-CSI wizardry isn't necessary" then you state "The Star Trek technology you are thinking about is far far too expensive"..make up your worthless mind d00d...I for one am sick and tired of your games and such...yep, it is expensive (in the fact that an agent has to be sent to a location and paid for his/her time) but it does exist....yet again I have to point out what a tool you are...

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

The facts are simple.

The hypothetical situation where professional grade data recovery available to
police defeats the military grade data erasing software available for free to the
public does not exist. Show us one instance where it did.

There's no point anyway because collectors of porn tend to amass large collections
instead of deleting it. Most arrests you see in the newspapers report "huge" collections.

In cases where encryption is used to hide porn, the police either get lucky or they
don't in decrypting the data. Data recovery is not an issue in those cases.

Extreme grades of data recovery are never employed in minor criminal cases.
It's too expensive and only available in matters as serious as murder or national
security. The fact that it takes extremely long times is also a deciding factor
against using it in criminal cases that have statutory time limitations.

None of these facts override or invalidate any other. They go together, adding up
to the simple fact that people who accidentally download something and delete it
right away are never going to be pounced upon by high-tech warriors with magical
abilities to conjure up deleted files and destroy lives. To suggest that such a thing
can happen is irresponsible sensationalism which does the P2P community no good.

Aaron,your comment made me feel better.
I am freaking out---I can't believe I accidentally half-way downloaded
(Cause I realized half way and stopped)
KP...I should read the titles very carefully next time.
I deleated the file, and as someone said in another post,
is using Eraser. I hope that is enough.
Worrying constantly about this issue has made me so tired,
and it happened just yesterday. I am so worried that the cops are going
to come any minute....

hi group

No. It's in the tools right beside the one to check the disk for errors. All it does is reassemble
scattered file sectors so each one is quick and easy to read or copy. They tend to get scattered a
bit in normal operations, and defragmenting them will restore disk performance.

A side benefit is that most or all of the empty sectors that might have held remnants of deleted
files are overwritten with other files during the defrag.

Aaron, in his self inflating importance, has again failed to give proper information on this subject....probably because he knows nothing about how things really work...

defragmentation will indeed speed up performance and overwrite some areas of your HDD...but not all...even if you defragment and then completely fill up your drive with data, there will still be possible areas where past data is accessible (even by free programs)...temp files, page files, etc....

about the only thing he has gotten right is that it is 'expensive' to truly retrieve data (and even getting that 'straight' answer was hard)....

for the truly worried I suggest totally wiping your HDD....nuke your HDD

__________________


So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

Thank you peerless and Aaron for your input. I'll have to get around trying that nuke thing. This thing has had me so stressed out and sleepless recently. I feel like the only way to make sure things don't turn bad is to go to the authorities and tell them what happened, but I fear they won't believe me. Is there any way to anonymously ask for advice from the authorities on this matter?

I personally stay away from all filesharing, newsgroups, and any other unsafe house of porn. I don't know how many of the cases where people in this thread who got in trouble are actually an accident or they are just lieing to themselves, but I would not take the chance. Through a combination of the justice systems and general publics ignorance of technology and incredibly harsh laws for mere possession, and then with filesharing it becomes 'promotion' as well, it's simply to risky to go to those places for good ol' legal pornography.

This article should rightly scare the pants of you if you downloaded anything like that; these guys are in the worse possible position. It's impossible to tell who might be a victim of circumstance and who has a major problem with this kind of stuff because they lump them all together and call them 'vile, disgusting deviants'. Thanks to recent Florida law changes by politicians looking for easy targets, these guys are facing the same kind of sentences murderers face.

19 Arrested in Child Porn Bust | TheLedger.com

One of the accused-
'Mitchell Parker, 22, of Lakeland said he didn't do it.

"I'll say one thing, don't ever get Bearshare or Limewire," he said, denying that he ever downloaded the illegal material. "I am disgusted. I wish I was in a battery acid pool right now." '

Oh my god. Guys that article has me truly terrified, I fee like just crying. Should I just go to the authorities?

Sorry brother, did not mean to terrify you. That sheriff in the article is especially into that kind of crime, he's kinda creepy actually when you here him talk. If you just downloaded half of something and then deleted it I really don't think you have anything to worry about with most professional law enforcement. Despite what they could possibly get you for if your hard drive was not clean, they would see the incident as a very non-intentional one based on that. And the fact is that if you have not had anyone knock on your door yet, very slim chance that you are ever going to. Real federal law enforcement is going to be looking for regular activity and then move in directly after a download or an exchange of some kind so they know they have current, real evidence; not to waste their time with an old half-event like yours. They want to catch people who are actually doing something wrong. Follow the good advice presented to you here, please stay clear of dangerous activity but please have peace of mind also my friend. You are going to be fine.