What is the defenition of computer privacy?

Answer 1

What Happens When you Erase Data?
Computer files are just strings of numbers, 1s and 0s. When they're organised into patterns, they can be rendered by a computer as information -- words, pictures, equations, the whole shebang. When even a few number sets at the beginning of a file -- the "pointer" that tells the computer where and what it is -- are randomised, however, the whole file becomes becomes invisible.

Without the protection of its pointer element, the computer treats a deleted file as though it were blank space, and replaces sections of the deleted file with sections of other files until, gradually, all the numbers have been "overwritten". At that point, theoretically, the file is erased.

The process of overwriting deleted files occurs randomly, however, and some files may sit on a hard drive nearly complete for years, while others may vanish in weeks. Any part of a file not completely overwritten can be recovered -- and those fragments are your "invisible" hard drive.

So what's on this invisible hard drive? Copies of everything you've ever looked at online, for one thing -- as well as all the email you've ever sent or received, and every document you've ever read or written using the computer.

That should give you something to think about when you trade your old model in for a new one -- because the chances are good that unless you've taken strong measures to erase your hard drive, everything is still on it, including your financial identity details.

Can I Really Erase a File?
Yes. Maybe.

A growing number of inexpensive software utilities claim they can erase files completely, beyond the reach of even tools like those employed by Convert and its peer organisations -- although recovery technology is advancing rapidly.

Most of the popular file wipe utilities cost under $US25 and work by trying to rewrite a file with meaningless information before it gets deleted.

The US Government has indicated, with a few important caveats, that data handled this way becomes unrecoverable after seven rewrites. Two popular wipe utilities that provide at least seven wipes are mcSanitizer and ShredX. ShredX gives users the option of 35 rewrite passes, and actually tries to wipe places the file might have sequestered away copies of itself as well. You'll want to write over files at least 50 times to get the most complete protection, however.

These tools, and others, can also be used to overwrite -- wipe -- your entire hard drive, but specialty tools, like IBAS ExpertEraser, are far more effective on big jobs.

Answer 2

Privacy in terms of Information Security is the property of being accessible only to persons who have legitimate rights to the data. It's similar in scope to the "CIA" triangle of InfoSec: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.