http://www.winferno.com/pcconfidential.aspx

What’s it do?

PC Confidential is described as “an extra strength hard drive cleaner” that scans your system for incriminating tracks that are hidden/stored in multiple locations and destroys/shreds these files.


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1: Yes.

Reviewer 2: Yes. While we are using our computers, we are unknowingly leaving scattered records of our activities, interests, and personal information on our hard drives. This program can be used to detect and remove many of those traces.

Reviewer 3: PC Confidential is a tool designed to clean your system of your Web browsing tracks and history. It does this in a couple of ways. After the initial installation of the program, it prompts you to perform a scan of your system. This scan identifies Web sites you have visited, videos and other pictures you may have watched, emails you have sent and received, etc. After the scan is completed, you are presented with a security report showing all the confidential files and other traces the program has found. The second thing it does is to permanently remove these files. Normal files are easy to delete but not those you cannot find or those that are locked. PC Confidential will search out and destroy those files that have been identified as a security risk, even those files that are locked by Windows. Once the files are deleted, you can be rest assured that they are unrecoverable by even the best recovery tools. If you tread a fine line at work browsing to questionable Internet sites or sending confidential emails, this program is for you. Today it is not unusual for companies to monitor Internet activity and this program can help hide your activities.

Reviewer 4: Yes. PC Confidential will erase unwanted and/or unneeded files and information stored in multiple locations on your computer. In many cases, you can do this yourself. For example, your browser creates a “cache” of Web sites that you have visited. On a return visit, instead of downloading the whole page from the site (which may take a lot of time), your browser can quickly load it from the cache on your hard drive. Over time, this cache builds up, and will eventually take up a lot of hard drive space. To avoid this, you can specify in the Options of your browser how much space is the maximum that you want this cache to grow to. You can also empty the cache, which will erase all those files. Another example: in your Start Menu, there is a list of the documents that you have recently worked on. This gives you quick access to things that you may be using on an “on-again-off-again” basis. You can also empty this list so that it can be renewed, or if you don’t want others prying into the things that you have been doing recently. Scattered all over your computer are dozens of these shortcuts, lists, logs, and other tracks of what you have been doing. To go to each one of them and erase them is not that easy: you must know where to find it and how to clear it. Some of the files may be hidden, or they may be difficult to erase. PC Confidential centralizes all this work, and lets you do so from one “command HQ.”

Reviewer 5: Yes, it does, and in a simple, straightforward, easy-to-use manner.


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1: Yes, although a rather sizeable file considering what little the program does.

Reviewer 2: Installation was fast and simple.

Reviewer 3: After selecting the installation executable, the program installed itself and even allowed me to select another drive to install it on. I like the flexibility to do this, as I like to customize my system to the way I work and store data.

Reviewer 4: Yes. Installation was straightforward and I was able to specify the location, shortcuts and other program parameters.

Reviewer 5: Yes, very straightforward.


Good points

Reviewer 1: It has an attractive and easy to use GUI (interface) and it eliminates about nine steps of internet cleaning (browser cache, browser history, cookies, search history, recent documents list, chat history [AOL, MSN, and YAHOO only], temp files, media player history [some], and your recycle bin), and promises to permanently destroy files to DOD standards if you choose. It supports Firefox, Opera, and Netscape.

Reviewer 2: In general, I like the way this program breaks out the options for the types of information to be scanned and removed from your system. The main categories of Internet history, temporary files, media player history, and chat logs each have their own buttons. Clicking on these buttons opens a list of the subcategories with checkboxes to allow you to decide what to scan for. You can perform a scan of each subcategory within this window and see exactly what is on your system. Unlike some other program which automatically goes to completion before you know what happened, you can view the scanned results and either delete the displayed items or not. The only refinement I would like to see would be to have the option of keeping some items within a category while deleting others. In this version, you can either delete the entire subcategory or keep it. I think that I keep my system cleaned up more than most users. In spite of this, I was impressed to see the amount of information found on my computer. As I looked through the results, I saw Internet sites I had visited, items I had searched for, and personal information I had entered on various forms over time. I don’t do chat so there was nothing in that category, but even without that, there was quite a profile of me and my activities, interests, and personal information uncovered by the scans. Options are available to clean traces of your computer and Internet activities on a one-time basis and on a repeated schedule. There is also another option to shred any file or folder on your system. This involves overwriting the actual data multiple times in order to make it unreadable and unrecoverable.

Reviewer 3: One nice configuration feature is the ability to setup the program to automatically delete your Browser History, Search history, Cache, Cookies and Media Player history to name a few. When you run the program, it generates a security report that will show you what is vulnerable on your system. You are prompted to keep this information or to delete it. It seems that the better data recovery programs cannot recover information that has been deleted by PC Confidential. The 10 passes and accompanying encryption keys ensure data cannot be recovered.

Reviewer 4: When PC Confidential starts up, you are presented with a screen with a nice clean layout. On the left side is a pane with the main functions of the program listed there: Complete Scan & Privacy Report; four Individual Scans: Erase Internet History, Delete Temporary Files, Remove Media Player History, and Delete Chat Logs. Below that, there are two other functions: Select Files to Shred and Classify Sites. The top half of the larger Main Window shows the actions that you can take when you select one of the choices on the left. The bottom half of that same window always has buttons for “Scan Now”, “Stop” and “My Results”. Along the bottom are functions that are common to all windows, including Options and Help. So it is very easy to move around in the program, and use its different parts. A useful feature in this window is “My Results”. As you do a scan, it collects all the information that it has picked up, and displays it in small screen below called “My Results.” You can use the scroll bar to look through the items that PC Confidential has picked up, before deciding whether to delete them or not. Since the list is usually quite long, I click on the “Copy” button at the bottom of the screen, then paste it into a text editor like Notepad. Since you can resize the Notepad screen, it is much easier to read what PC Confidential has found, and what it suggests should be deleted The section that I particularly like is “Delete My Temporary Files.” As you work on your computer, using different applications, surfing the Net, playing games, or whatever, your programs tend to create various “temporary” files. These are not always cleaned up when you shut down one program and move on to the next. Fairly quickly, these now-useless files hang around, cluttering up your hard drive, and sometimes leaving data and information that should not be there. This scan includes the “Recent Documents” and the Recycle Bin. Running the scan and cleanup of this debris is done efficiently and easily with PC Confidential.

Reviewer 5: PC Confidential's animated tutorials were among the best learning tools I've ever seen. They were quick, to the point, and effective. A minor glitch was that when at the end you clicked on the link to a fuller explanation, you are taken to the Documentation page where there is no down arrow or slide bar for viewing the portion below the bottom of the screen. Also, if you closed the page and wanted to go back to it, you had to rerun the tutorial. The Technical Support’s promise that "Support representatives respond to all support inquiries within 2 business days." and "We reply to every email, no exceptions" I liked, although I had no opportunity to test this claim. Also, I liked very much that the Knowledge Base articles have thumbs-up/down user evaluation polling with respect to their helpfulness, a great idea.


Weak points

Reviewer 1: The above nine steps of cleaning performed you can easily do yourself for free. There is no trail version—well, the trial version will scan but not allow you to remove anything. It is “bloat ware,” i.e. takes far too many computer resources for what little it does. It is nearly impossible to uninstall totally. It likes to add itself to your startup folder and run in background all of the time. Where’s the mask? It is an unconscionable and unreasonable $39.95.

Reviewer 2: The main issue I experienced is related to the size of the working windows in the running program. The PC Confidential windows occupy perhaps a sixth of the area on my relatively high resolution screen. I have tweaked my display settings in WinXP in the past so the issues I am about to discuss may stem from there. From comparison with the screen shots in the help section, I am not seeing the bottom 10% of the left side of the display in each window. I can see that some action boxes such as the shredder button are falling off of the edge of the screen. Normally, I would try to overcome this by maximizing the window size to fill my entire screen but this is not an option which is available in this program. The only other issue I can think of is that this program can remove information you might find useful. Recently opened documents, Internet history, and autocomplete items fall into this category. A user who sorts through the categories and subcategories of items to be removed can easily avoid this pitfall.

Reviewer 3: I found the help file to be a bit weak and if your search criteria is not part of the program it did nothing but prompts you. A descriptive error would be better at this point then just nothing.

Reviewer 4: There are a number of items that worry me about this program. First, once it has done a scan, you have two options: Delete All, or not do anything. I was unable to find a way to selectively delete items that were presented in the “My Results” window. Whereas a lot of the stuff that is picked up in a scan is certainly useless rubbish, I would like to be sure that I am only erasing things that I want to delete. For example, Cookies are usually harmless files that are written to your hard drive when you visit Websites. Often, they are log-on information that you have chosen to let your computer “remember” for you. So I do not necessarily want to delete all the cookies on my computer. Some certainly I do not need, and often they have been put there without my express permission. Since there are freeware programs that allow me to be able to look at these cookies, and determine which I want to keep and which ones I want to delete, a commercial program such as this one should have this kind of function built into it. The same should apply through out the program. Another item got me into trouble. To try to teach PC Confidential certain preferences that I have is the item: ”Classify Sites.” I wanted to specify certain sites as “Trusted”. This means that Internet Explorer, when at a Trusted Site, would allow that site to interact with my computer without having to check with me all the time that what it was doing was OK. In other words, it is “Trusted”. Stupidly, I told the program to bring in my Favorites. I thought that it would ask me, one by one, if I wanted this or that site to be trusted. For example, I “trust” my bank site. I also “trust” Neat Net Tricks. But there are others that I would like to keep a careful eye on. Unfortunately, PC Confidential took all my Favorites, and classified them all as trusted, one after the other. My Spyware program (and a couple of others) leapt up and warned me that I was lowering the Security level of Internet Explorer for each of those sites: one after the other. I couldn’t stop it, and like a row of dominos, they all became trusted. I had to use a “restore” program to put everything back in order. I swore off that part of the PC Confidential program. I advise anyone to use it with extreme care, if at all. In short, although PC Confidential does provide you with some useful cleanup and management tools, it clumps everything together, and does not let you specify what to trash and what to keep. Something else that I find to be below average is the Product Support. The Help files themselves are quite straightforward. The program itself is not very complicated, so the simple Help files are in keeping with the specific niche that PC Confidential fills, and that is fine. I would like to use the time-honoured F1 key for Help, but that is a minor point. But I was surprised to find that the Help that is downloaded and installed with the program is the same as going online and looking at the Help on the Website. What I expect from the Website is an elaboration, an extension, a supplement to the Help already on my computer. Rather than finding out much more about PC Confidential, I find myself on the Winferno site where all their software is listed, and I can ask questions about all their products. PC Confidential is buried somewhere in the middle of a list of other things that I am not, at this moment, interested in. So I finally decided to send a message asking about the selective deletion of cookies (supposed to be possible). Although they say that they attempt to have a turnaround time of one business day, several days pass without even an automatic response, much less one from a person with a name and email address. One final point: I do not happen to use Chat Rooms, and am limited in my use of the Media Players. These form two of the Main Functions of the Program. On the other hand, I use many other programs that produce their own lists of this and that which I would like to have eliminated in one easy step. It seems to me that PC Confidential should have the ability, built into its Preferences or its Setup, that would allow me to go on the Website, and load in Plug-Ins for other widely-used software. This way, I could custom-build the cleansing the PC Confidential would do, based on the programs that I happen to have and use.

Reviewer 5: I had already come to hate PC Confidential before ever having a chance to see its main screen, much less use it. I had to crawl thru its multitude of Gotchas! in the most restrictive and objectionable End User License Agreement that I've ever come across: "You may install one copy of the Software on one computer...." makes the program useless to virtually everyone who owns and uses more than one computer. Most software vendors in this day and age permit serial, nonconcurrent use with a single license on laptop/deskside or home/office computers. "Your license is effective for a one-year term commencing on the date you downloaded it." It's bad enough that the licensing is set up on a recurring basis, I've never seen a license on which the clock started ticking when downloaded. "You may not rent, lease, loan, resell or otherwise transfer the Software.... You may not transfer any of the rights granted under this Agreement." speaks for itself. "You may not copy the Software or Documentation...." I've never heard of a commercial program that refused the owner permission to copy its User documentation, especially as little as exists for this program. "You assume responsibility for selecting software to achieve your intended results, and for the installation of, use of, and results obtained from the Software." In other words, if the software doesn't work as advertised that's your problem, not theirs. I believe PC Confidential is substantially overpriced at $39.95; something in the range of $10-20 would be more reasonable. The 'Help' button on the user interface goes strictly to Help document. Having at least a link to the Website there is normal practice, as well as usually a registration link, etc.


Other comments

Reviewer 1: This reviewer’s prejudices aside, this is a program that is a perfect example of how to waste your money. It does FAR LESS than many similar programs that do FAR MORE and COST FAR LESS. The cost alone would keep me from recommending this product

Reviewer 2: Technical support is via email only. I did most of my evaluation from a remote location without email or Internet access. Telephone support would have been useful in this situation.

Reviewer 3: If you use Windows Internet Explorer you cannot do without this program. It is very powerful in permanently erasing your Internet history, cookies and current computer activity. I like the idea of the program reporting on all aspects of your system and being able to delete these items, but its power lies in two areas. It gives you the option to keep information or to delete it and it deletes the information based upon government standards, thereby ensuring it cannot be recovered. In today’s world of hackers and those who try to steal personal information, this is a powerful application that should be in everyone’s tool kit.

Reviewer 4: Given the limitations that seem to be inherent in this program, I find it to be expensive. Until it deals with some of the points of weakness I have found in it, I would not pay more than $15-20.

Reviewer 5: Frankly, my most serious reservation about this program is how little useful function it provides; in my opinion, just its file shredding capability.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1: No.

Reviewer 2: Yes.

Reviewer 3: Yes.

Reviewer 4: No, not on a regular basis. I may, once in a while, use it to delete the temporary files on my computer, but not for any of the other functions, for the reasons mentioned above.

Reviewer 5: Occasionally, and then strictly for its file shredding capability. Neither I, nor anyone else I know other than teenagers, have much interest in covering Internet tracks on their own computers.

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