In our ongoing "Privacy Solutions Series" we have been outlining
various user-empowerment or user "self-help" tools that allow
Internet users to better protect their privacy online. These
tools and methods form an important part of a layered approach
that we believe offers a more effective alternative to
government-mandated regulation of online privacy. [See entries
1, 2, 3, 4] In this installment, we will be exploring CCleaner,
a free Windows-based tool created by UK-based software developer
Piriform that scrubs you computer's hard drive and cleans its
registry. We'll describe how CCleaner helps you destroy data and
protect your private information. Whenever you move files to the
recycling bin and subsequently purge the recycling bin, the
affected files remain on your computer. In other words, deleting
files from the recycling bin does not remove them from the
computer. The reason for this is important and, in many ways,
beneficial. In some respects, many computer file systems work
like an old library catalo