14 DAY TRIAL // How many times did you think that the data on your computer is not safe enough? I think about it every day. And I know that if I do not take all the measures the moment I sell my HDD I give away all my skeletons in the closet. I give the buyer a chance to peep into my private files, despite the fact that I Shift-deleted them. I know it is pretty scary, but there are ways to avoid this situation and keep your files to yourself.
Or did you know that every location you navigate to on the Internet can be discovered with the minimum effort? Skeptic? Take a look in the temporary files of your computer. Is it all there? OK, then it is time to erase all those tracks.
Privacy Killer is an application specially designed to clean your computer of unused and sometimes compromising data. The price of the software is $39.99 but you get to try it for free for a period of 15 days. Unfortunately, the free version of the program is demo and you will not be able to fully test it, but this will have to do.
The interface is quite gloomy but this should not hinder your wiping activity at all. The limitations of the demo version of the application include locked schedule option, no updating is possible, removing the items in the startup manager can be made only one for each session and shredding the files on your computer is limited to 2MB.
Privacy Killer is equipped with tools for erasing the tracks in four web browsers. These are currently among the most used for Internet navigation and downloading. Thus, Privacy Killer can eliminate the temporary files, URL history, cache files, auto-complete files, cookies, download history or auto-save/browsing sessions. The web browsers affected by the application are IE/AOL, Firefox, Netscape and Opera.
To tell you the truth I was impressed of how thorough Privacy Killer was during the operation. If you have one of the supported browsers open, the program will kindly ask you to close it in order to complete its job. Also, if one of the browsers is not installed on your system Privacy Killer will warn you about this at attempting to select one of the options.
Windows is also leaving all sorts of tracks during your work. Privacy Killer will eliminate the log files, file fragments (CHK files), Start and Search History, temporary folder and even the Recycle Bin. The recent documents you have opened are also included in the sweeping process.
Additional elements that leave traces behind and might give away important details like browsing habits, are search engine toolbars embedded in both IE and Firefox (Google, Yahoo, MSN search, Ask, AltaVista, DogPile, Groowe or Windows Live).
In the lower part of the main screen you can find the tools for deleting the tracks of various media players. The list is not too comprehensive and some elements like WinDVD or Foobar are missing. But the nastiest of them are present: Windows Media Player, DivX Media Player, RealTime Player, QuickTime Player, Winamp, AVIPreview or PowerDVD. I expected the possibility of adding some plugins to support clearing other players and not restrict the user to the default ones. I for one, am using none of the applications in this section (except for QuickTime and RealTime when there is no alternative).
The last section available in the main application window is called Others. Here are included 16 programs that are highly appreciated by the users and used constantly. Privacy Killer knows from where to delete the Acrobat reader recent documents, Windows Clipboard, Kazaa Search, Office 2003/XP recent docs, Open Office temporaries, WinZip/7Zip/WinRar history, or RegEdit last visited locations and takes care of them all.
In all the above mentioned sections the user has the possibility of choosing the applications Privacy Killer should delete the temporary files. The operation does not take too long to complete and it is safe and thorough.
The menu bar comes to complete the suite of options available in the main window and gives you the chance to set Privacy Killer to turn of or restart the computer after the cleaning completed. The Tools in the Options menu adds more functionality to the software as you benefit from a cookie manager, startup manager, file shredder and an uninstaller. The startup manager is not a state of the art tool, but it'll do its job and prevent the items from loading with Windows. The same is available for the uninstaller. There are no other options then uninstalling the file.
Setting up Privacy Killer is an easy task in demo version considering that all you can do is configure the shredder (up to 10 passes can be set), set the hot keys and configure the behavior of the application (startup mode, minimizing, setting it to run when the default browser is closed, etc.). All the other settings (Schedule and Update) are prohibited. With Themes there is something strange happening because I could not change them and going on the website only the default skin was available.
The Good
Privacy Killer does a remarkable job with clearing all the files that are stored for nothing on your computer. You will no longer leave traces after an Internet browsing session and others won't be able to see what documents you have read.
The restart and shutdown options come in handy when there is a bit more work to do and you do not want to wait for the job to complete.
The Panic Bosskey (Win+F5 by default) is amazing. It will instantly hide all web browsers and some of the most used instant messengers. Privacy Killer will also be hidden from view.
The Bad
There is an acute need for plugins in order to support other softwares as well. Without them very much of the flexibility of the application is wasted.
The price seems quite large, but it is not larger than the applications in the same category. However, adding some plugins would fully justify it.
The "start cleaning" button should stand out so that every user would see it from the moment the application loads. Making it that simple and positioning it in an unusual location makes for a difficult recognition.
I experienced some crashed during the testing. One of them occurred when I tested the Windows section of the main application screen. The other one when I gave the command to clean everything and restart my computer. I guess there was too much.
The themes should be fixed as I have seen a Mac Tiger looking one that seems quite appealing.
The Truth
Very good program for cleaning your computer of traces and freeing some more space on the hard disk. Besides the aforementioned issues everything went OK.
It is only normal to be some mischiefs in early versions of any software, but Privacy Killer has a good start.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
