I am the parent of two teenagers. Help me please. Once the kids download something and then trash it, is there a way I can check to see what the've downloaded? I've tryed the library but they know to delete. Concerned parent. Thanks

It is a little difficult to offer detailed advice because you have not identified what machine and which operating system is involved (the answers will differ depending on whether you dealing with a PC or a Mac). However, I can offer you the theory and you can make a better decision about how far you wish to pursue it. Although the use of the delete key appears to remove a given character or file from the screen, it does not actually erase it from the machine. To manage memory allocation, your computer uses a directory of data addresses. When you "delete" a file, the addresses that file occupied are freed for reuse. In due course, as a user accumulates more data for storage, the addresses will be overwritten but, depending on how much new data is to be retained, this may take weeks or months. Hence, you can recover blocks of data from your machine's memory during this "waiting" period. But the processes of recovery involved are quite demanding and require expertise. It is not simply a case of downloading a conveniently available package and waiting while it searches your memory. So it might involve considerable effort on your part to master the processes and involve you monopolising the machine for significant periods of time. While I sympathise in your general intention to monitor the activities of your children (the internet mirrors the best and worst of all cultures), you may well have to rely on less hands-on approaches to guide their social development into adults.

David91, Thank you for your reply. Here is a little more information. I have a mac and run Mac OS9.2, built in memory 128MB, virtual memory 150MB. As you can tell I know very little of what I'm doing. If you really are 91 years old, I take my hat off to you. You give me hope. If you think this would be out of my league I'll understand. I am however willing to learn as much as I can. Thanks again for your help. (and I thought I was the oldman on the block, at 44 years old)

Well, I make no promises about the quality of the product but you can have a free trial of http://www.binarybiz.com/vlab/mac.php and see how it goes. However, slightly off topic, there will come a time when you have to trust your kids to look the world in the face and not be corrupted by it.

And, sad to say, that at only forty four, this makes you a babe in arms.

Good luck

David

TechTool is a good utility program. It has a Trash Cache, which will allow you to recover files which have been trashed.

Of course, if your kids are savy, they will learn to go to the TechTool Trash Cache and purge it also.

Norton Utilities has a trash cache that is not user deletable as I recall.

Also, if you're really suspicious, you can get little programs that can record every keystroke inputted on a computer. So then you can tell what they are searching for. I can't give you a url for this, because I must have read it in mac addict/mac world a year or two ago, but they are out there. Little free programs that do that. Innocuous and hard to find, they pretend to be a system extension and write a log to some place you designate.

Edit:

In addition, although I certainly have no right to interfere with your parenting...but being a teenager myself, I think I could safely say that your child/children may not really appreciate your snooping around on what they've searched. But, ack, none of my business.