I was clearing my chat history after seeing a few conversations that could be potentially dangerous to my liberty (i.e. jail) if discovered in my history. While there are methods to recover chat histories, regular clearing will make it harder for any LEO to get evidence in the case (god forbid) you get busted....

So, here's how to clear histories in MSN and Trillian, if you use another chat client and know how to do this, please post up the information or links to a guide...

Trillian Info.

NB - Ensure Trillian is not running while performing this action.

In Trillian, the default log location is: C:\Program Files\Trillian\users\default\logs
Browse to this folder and you will find subdirectories corresponding with each chat network you use (i.e. - "MSN", "ICQ", "AOL", etc etc...).

These will have another 2 folders "Channels" and "Queries", which contain several ".log" and ".xml" file. Each file represents a conversation you have had or messages you have received.

Select all the .log and .xml files in these directories and delete them.

Don't use MSN and refuse to install the crap on my machine (bad enough using Windows), but I found this info which tells you how to clear your chat history and more (if someone has a better one, please post it, this one sucks)...

http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_remove_myself_..._a_machine.html

Hey thanks, I never thought of chat history, but yeah there would be a few conversations that I wouldn't want out either...
Deleted...ta...

thanks for the link :thumbsup

remember to use a program like deepdelete (www.methlabs.org) to delete things like that... or they might not be as deleted as you think they are!

Chances are if you use the chat program after deleting the old logs, the data will be overwritten by new logs generated.

Deleted things "not really deleting" and LEOs being able to recover them is a bit of a myth, it IS possible, but the circumstances have to be right for it.

If you're that worried - run a defrag on your drive after deleting "sensetive" data. The sectors that the data was stored in will be overwritten generally while doing this.

Or if you're REALLY paranoid... you could empty and then paste junk into the chat logfiles before you deleted them.

You got it right Eikel, if you got busted for a few plants the police wouldn't spend the money trying to retrieve deleted data, however a commercial sized bust might be a different story, so yeah for your avaerage Joe just deleting would be fine

Yeah, I know all that, but I am a paranoid stoner, thus have to cover my tracks to the Nth degree ::

[quote=HighRising,Dec 17 2005, 01:11 PM]
Chances are if you use the chat program after deleting the old logs, the data will be overwritten by new logs generated.

Deleted things "not really deleting" and LEOs being able to recover them is a bit of a myth, it IS possible, but the circumstances have to be right for it.

If you're that worried - run a defrag on your drive after deleting "sensetive" data. The sectors that the data was stored in will be overwritten generally while doing this.

Or if you're REALLY paranoid... you could empty and then paste junk into the chat logfiles before you deleted them.

[/quote]

Yeah, I know all that, but I am a paranoid stoner, thus have to cover my tracks to the Nth degree ::

[/quote]


you should always be carefull who you trust in the way of developers Not all "shredders " do what they claim , it is quite easy to claim that I wipe somethign 7 or 8 times without actually proving it in any way , hell how would you know any different if the file is not viewable ( not saying your app doesn't but sometimes your best to do things the "long way ")

zeroing files is a nice effective way as elkel has sugested ( opening up the file and fillign it with gobbly goop )

There are also some far more extream methods that can be implemented if your REALLY worried but i'll be honest with you , if they have a warrant for your house and are interested in your computer , chances are they have been watchign your chat logs as they occour anyways , it is not very hard to monitor things like that with the permission to do so as I'm sure you can imagine

I'm not really that worried, I'm fine with just normally deleting as I have really have nothing to hide, and if some bloke was really going to the effort of finding out what I'm doin, he'd realise I'm doin bugger all