Novel Info Required

[thesshhh]

A pal of mine is writing a novel which partly involves a man found to have indecent images on his home computer (a PC, not a Mac apparently). She's asked me to ask you: 1) would those pictures only be in My Pictures or could they be hidden elsewhere? 2) Even if he'd deleted some, would they still be on his computer somewhere and if so how could they be retrieved? She wonders how detectives do that on suspect's PCs. She's a stickler for accuracy, and says thanks for any help

[Berniecuddles2]

lol the question is a great story!!

[Guilbert53]

You can put the photos anywhere on your computer, not only in "My Pictures". So you could create a new folder (any name) anywhere on the disk, then create a folder in that folder, then create another folder, and so on, then put the photos in the last folder created so the photos were buried deep inside multiple folders.

When you delete a file (photo etc) in Windows it is not actually deleted. The POINTER to it is deleted (so it wont be found when looking for it) and it is marked as deleted but the file (photo) stays on the hard disk. It is only properly deleted if Windows needs to reuse the space where the deleted photo is.

But if Windows never needs to re-use the space on the disk the deleted file could stay on the disk for months or even years. This is why you should never sell or give away a computer till you have done a real deep clean of the hard disk.

There is software available though (to the average user) to find deleted files (Recuva is one).

(Even after a deep clean the Police and secret service have software that can recover some deleted files - not sure how though)

Note that also in Windows you can mark a file as "hidden". Windows has hundreds of system files that are "hidden" so the end user never sees them but they are on your hard disk.

So a user could have dodgy photos on their PC but mark them all as "hidden" so they cant be found with a casual look. However in Windows you can set an option to say "show hidden files" and all the photos would be shown. The police could just set "show hidden files" to find hidden photos.

If you need more info just ask.

[woofgang]

Another possibility.....Many of the photo manipulation programs operate in layers...this means until you save the image in a flattened format, each image can consist of multiple layers, each one of which could be a photo. The work in progress can be saved as all the layers and its saved in a format that is specific to the program that you are using It can only be opened by the specific program and the file format is a suffix specific to that program...its possible to save those files anywhere too. If it was me though and wanting to hide something, I would either use a USB and deep clean the computer after every use, or I would set up some secure cloud storage under a different name and likewise deep clean the computer after every access. Yes I have given this some thought, again for a novel, and no, this was not the solution I decided upon so your friend is welcome to use my musings.

[thesshhh]

very helpful apparently, thank you. She'd now like to know: What of photos deleted from a Hotmail account, can they be retrieved a long time after deletion?

[woofgang]

Downloaded and saved on the computer yes, same as anything else stored on a computer. Viewed online would be harder...I have a feeling that, like other web facilities, the facility have, in the past, refused access to their users' files. Police would need to guess the perp’s username and password I guess...maybe a good twist would be to have the online email provider to be policing their own files? They can’t inform the police but might in some way send some kind of hint to police forces...I mean who knows? maybe they do actually do this?

[woofgang]

I have a kind of feeling - and you’d need to know the facts from someone who uses hotmail which I do not - that if you are sent an image on such a web platform, you can’t open it without downloading it.....

[Buenchico]

Nobody seems to have mention 'shredding' software, which genuinely deletes all files (by over-writing them many times with random data). EVERYONE who values their security (and definitely not just people who're involved in illegal activities) should have such software on their computers. This is just one (of several) programs I use:
http://www.fileshredder.org/

This software includes advanced 'shredding' functions and also allows users to hide their files in an encrypted 'safe':
https://www.steganos.com/en/steganos-privacy-suite-18
(No security agency has ever managed to break that encryption. A 'casual' look at a user's computer by, say, an ordinary policeman wouldn't even show that such a 'safe' exists. A trained expert could see that it does but still couldn't view its contents. However it's a criminal offence, with a maximum penalty of two year's imprisonment, not to provide the password to such a 'safe' when required to do so by police officers investigating an alleged relevant offence).

[woofgang]

Yes, I have got a shredder on my laptop, its a mac one.