photo traces

kardenm

New Member
If I view photos from an sd card then eject the card will there still be copies or traces of those photos on my hard drive somewhere? Also, what If I copy and paste to same card or another card or if I do other editing such as zoom, rotate, etc.? Thanks. (using windows xp, using "windows picture and fax viewer")
 
This is actually a really difficult question to answer, because the internal workings of most programs are not publicly documented, and because the answer can vary according to circumstances (e.g whether the computer goes into hibernation when the transfer is taking place). While I cannot think of any reason why Picture and Fax Viewer would cache data on the hard drive in the circumstances you describe, that is a long way from saying that it does not do so.

The major threat to the privacy of ordinary users is, in my opinion, the way in which the file system, the OS and applications squirrel data away in places the user will simply not know about. That is why it makes sense to
  • understand as much as possible about the way applications you use regularly actually store data (it is quite instructive to look at the contents of the hidden Appdata folder in your user folder, for example);
  • if you can, transfer as much of your user data as possible (including such things as Firefox profiles and mail databases) to a separate drive or partition, which will be easier to clean (and protect from a system crash) than a system drive;
  • make intelligent use of an application like CCleaner to delete (and optionally overwrite) clutter generated by applications;
  • use Eraser to erase potentially sensitive files explicitly;
  • use Eraser to clear unused space on the drive from time to time.

David
 
Thanks David.
The subject fascinates me. I wonder if there is there some experiment I could do to at lesast tell me if it does happen, if not where. I just don't know enough about how an OS works. Is it possible to tell if something is getting cached by monitoring the disc space used before and after? Maybe too much other stuff going on at same time to make that an accurate measurement.
 
kardenm said:
Is it possible to tell if something is getting cached by monitoring the disc space used before and after? Maybe too much other stuff going on at same time to make that an accurate measurement.
Yes, I'm afraid that's the issue.

David
 
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