Privacy Guardian

If you want to ensure your privacy on a computer, you would have to do something more than deleting a few sensitive files. There are countless history files on a computer, which can give away your browsing habits and other personal details. Even if you delete them, they can be recovered with specialized applications. With Privacy Guardian, you can remove system and browser history files or other trace data and make sure that it stays deleted. The software's file shredding capabilities are based on advanced overwriting algorithms, which make it impossible for any application to "undelete" your data.

Privacy Guardian is not free, but you can use a trial version, which doesn't come with any serious restrictions. It works on Windows XP and all later editions and it does not ask for powerful hardware. Due to the small setup package, it should not take more than a minute to download and install the application on your computer.

The available privacy tools are listed on a user friendly interface. They include several cleanup utilities, a disk scrubber and a file shredder. If you select a cleanup tool or the disk scrubber, the software will display a list of item types, which you can target for removal. For example, the Windows history removal tool will display various components of the operating system, like document history, clipboard temporary files and more. All you have to do is select one or more items and click a button to clear their contents.

The browser history cleaner can remove the cache, history files, cookies, saved passwords and more, from Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and other browsers. You can also scan installed applications and remove any data they leave behind. When deleting a file, the physical information will remain on the hard disk, to preserve resources. To make sure that no one can recover the deleted data, you can use Privacy Guardian's disk scrubber to wipe the free space on your hard drive. Additionally, you can use its disk shredder feature to permanently delete existing files or folders.