Lab Notes

According to Microsoft, an incriminating piece of evidence in their case against an employee who defected to Google was found in the Recycle Bin of the employee's Microsoft-owned computer. If this guy is so brilliant, why didn't he know that dragging a file to the Recycle Bin doesn't actually delete it? Even after emptying the Recycle Bin, the file is still around on the hard drive and can be recovered by computer forensics tools. An really, what was he doing talking to his employer's competitor using his employer's hardware?

The best defense against having your files read is to maintain control of your PC, both from a software perspective and retaining physical possession of the hardware. If you must give up control, there are literally dozens of tools available that will securely erase files on your hard drive by overwriting their bits on the disk. I personally use PGP, but the brilliant search engine scientist could have used a search engine to find a number of others.