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Privacy Control with XP Privacy Pro

My first experience with a privacy cleaner was WinClear, which cleans up Windows and Internet Explorer temporary files, passwords, cookies, and history. It also handles a few other programs like Word, Excel and Windows Media Player. It's very easy to use, but at the bottom line, it is a program that focuses on Microsoft Windows and other Microsoft programs.

I kept looking and found the much more flexible cleaner XP Privacy Pro, which also handles Netscape, Opera and Firefox web browsers in addition to Internet Explorer.

I'm much happier with XP Privacy Pro, since it gives me more direct control of what the program finds and deletes — and that it handles my Firefox and Opera browsers, too.

When I start XP Privacy Pro, the following is the Sweep and Clean Wizard that is displayed. Here I can make some high-level choices about what I want XP Privacy Pro to try to find and clean.

(click on the image for a larger version)

The left image below is the Web Browser selection dialog, where I can choose to search and clean any or all of Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Opera. I can also choose which types of data I want to have cleared and which I want to retain.

The right image similarly shows the options for cleaning Windows itself.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

The left image below shows the individual programs that XP Privacy Pro will handle. I can select or unselect any or all of these.

The right image is a look at the File and Disk Shredder window. From here, I can shred the free space on the hard drive (deleting a file doesn't actually remove the data on the drive — it just marks a special table on the hard drive to show that the file was deleted and that the space is available again). I can also shred a file or a folder from here. The "shred level" allows me to choose how many times the data is overwritten in order to prevent it from being recovered.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

After scanning, I get the option to change my mind about any of the things XP Privacy Pro found in its scan.

I can uncheck a few (e.g., save my browser passwords even though I told the program to find them) before I tell it to erase the others.

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.