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Videos/movies I downloaded from the web.

Screenshots from videos I watched (YouTube, Dailymotion, etc).

Images created for and pix used in web-design projects.

Images/photos I uploaded to/downloaded from the web (Google Docs, Facebook, etc).

Photos I viewed (National Geographic, Playboy, Huffington Post, etc).

Photos of items I browsed/purchased (Amazon, eBay, etc.).

A few examples from my recovered history:

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If the hacker opens these files with a photo manager, or multimedia application, such as, Windows Photo Gallery, RealPlayer, Picasa, etc, he can discover what photos/images I viewed on various sites. Nevertheless, the confidential files are still there to be recovered: Recovered images and photos have weird names, like the one circled below, because, like I said, after deletion the file reference is gone. The hacker could also recover what images/photos I viewed on various websites. The recovered History Provider Cache also has records of search terms I entered into the search box in Chrome:

A few examples from the recovered History Provider Cache:

Here is what the guy could find out about my online activities: Browsing historyДЄs you can see, these excerpts from a recovered history log clearly show what sites I recently visited and even the date/time of visiting.ДЄnd it's not only general site URLs that can be recovered, but also the exact pages I visited on a particular site. To demonstrate what confidential information could be recovered from your stolen laptop, I cleared my browsing history on my own computer and run a file recovery tool on it (so now my computer represents your laptop).

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Since the confidential history files are actually not gone from your computer after deletion, they can be accessed and recovered by unauthorized parties using free file recovery tools available on the web. However, the problem is that Windows employs a user-independent pattern to overwrite deleted files so the overwriting can take weeks, months, or even years! To save time and resource, it simply removes the file's reference from the directories (that's why your deleted browsing history seems to be gone) and moves the actual information contained in the file to a special area, called free space, on your computer's hard drive where it will be overwritten by new files over time. Now, the problem is that when you 'delete' a file in Windows (it doesn't matter if it's a photo, a financial plan, or a cache file), the operating system doesn't bother shredding the sensitive information (overwriting it with random data). Like I said, your browsing history includes the cache files. So after a while the cache folder turns into a digital travel diary that has a record of every websites you have ever visited and the activities you have performed on those sites. However, please keep in mind that your browser caches everything it encounters just in case it needs to use that item again, be it a logo, an image, a photo, a video, a podcast, a site URL and so on. That's a really nice feature that speeds up browsing a great deal.

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The way your browser is 'thinking' is this: Why don't we save the permanent page elements to the computer so we don't need to download them again and again from the remote Amazon server when the guy returns to the site? The site also displays hundreds of products that are likely to stay on the site for some, or a long time to come. The site has a distinctive brand logo, a checkout cart, a sign-in box and many other items that remain unchanged anytime you visit the site. So what are the cache files and what do they do? Let's say you visit for the very first time. The type of files we need to focus on now is the cache files, because they are easy to recover and once recovered, they can reveal unauthorized parties basically everything about your Internet activities. Your browsing history is made up of various items, such as, site URLs, cookies, cache files, download list, search history and so on.

Why is it so? Let's explore how Windows deletes confidential information and you'll know the answer in a short while.Д«ut first, let's have a look at what browsing history actually is. In technical terms, your deleted browsing history can be recovered by unauthorized parties, even after you cleared them. Even though the folder is gone from the direct view of unwanted people, but the documents still exist and can easily be found with a bit of extra effort.

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I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but when you clear your history to keep your browsing activities confidential, it's like moving a folder full of confidential documents from your desk into the desk's drawer. Why Clearing Your Browsing History Does Not Protect Your Privacy