When it deletes the temp folder upon close, does it use a secure delete, or does it just do a normal delete that can be restored with a file undelete program?
New: Kanri (Oct 9, '24), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, '24)
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i think it use a normal delete of the files, but without moving them to receycle bin - so you realy need a file restore programm.
In my oppinion no problem, cause in my eyes the data that a file burning programm produces are not security-relevant or is a mp3 unpacked to a wave file somthing like that?
And in the most cases the data you burn are from the host PC so they are already existent there so where is the need to make a secure delete the temp data?
Other burning programs even do not clear their temp dir, till you burn the next CD,...
A secure delete maybe important if you download illegal data on friends PC, burn them and delete them after that but i don't think it is the task of the InfraRekorder Launcher, to help someone to cover up such things.
And privat data, that i have on my stick, i burn on my home-PC for Backup.
So a normal deletion of any generated tempdata of InfraRekorder should be enough.
I think it is pretty difficult to secure delete via NSIS...
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Well, it's the fact that these programs are supposed to be portable and not write anything to the PC. If all of these programs on this site call themselves portable because they just do a soft delete on the PC when you close them, then I don't consider any of these programs portable.
but how many normal average users know about undelete programs and how to use them?
I don't think there are too many. And this question will be obsolete once the new Platform is out.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Thes Programs are Portable cause they left nothing on the host PC like temp data, registry entries, or other config files or folder,...
No one say, that a portable app is not allowed to write to the host PC at its runtime,... some do that, cause it is not possible to do it not in some cases, or to avoid many read and write accesses on the drive, that could be deadly especially for flash drives and smartcard,..
Important is, that they delete the data after they had run and store their settings only in their folder, that is the reason, they can call themselves portable,...
Crumbles, please check out this link:
https://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app
It doesn't say that the apps do "not write anything to the PC."
It says that "when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind."
John and the developers here make every effort to prevent files from being left behind, but the fact is, it's not always possible to prevent temporary files from being written to the computer without fundamentally altering the source code of the application.
At this site, the developers do not change the original source code, but instead package it in a way that it conforms to the definition of a portable app as understood here.
If we limited ourselves only to applications that don't write anything at all to the computer, we'd have a pretty small selection.
However, if you have a way of coding the packages so that absolutely no data is written to the computer for every app, feel free to share it; I'm sure that the developers here would love to incorporate that.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
if he has a way to code packages that write absolutely nothing to the PC he has a way that they not use the PCs memory too - cause data from the memory sometimes will be written to the PCs pagefile.
amazing 
But your right, sometimes it can not be avoided that apps write something to the PC - important is, that it will be deleted afterwards,...
And if someone want to be completely sure, that no one gets what he do at a PC - this someone should not use the PCs of other people, only his own,...
But thanks to god: I trust my friends, that they NOT send their PCs to a data recovery labory after i plugged in my portable apps stick, to get eventually some personal data of me,...
it makes no sense, to put this tempdir on your stick, cause the most burning programs use it for small files, and exact these ones need the most time to read from a usb-drive especially from flash drives - and they are not fast enough as a temp drive for a burning program - maybe at slower burning speeds it could work,...
and InfraRekorder uses the tempdir for the FIFOcache too i think and having this cache on the USB drive would cause many read and write Processes to the flash drive - and maybe much empty buffer errors,... But this cache is deleted with ending of the burning Process anyway and no burning program uses secure deletion for such cache or other tempfiles, as far as i know,...
And normally no one has a use of the fifo cache data - not without a apecial Programm or a HEX Viewer and much, much special knowledge,...
But if you wanna be sure use your Eraser Portable and delete all the free Space on the host PC with the safest methode
I don't have a problem if a program has to write a file to a PC. However, it should use a program like eraserl.exe to remove them so it's impossible to recover any data left behind.
PortableApps.com programs are Not Stealth.
They never claimed to be.
The purpose of these apps is to be able to take them with you, and then have them clean up after themselves when they are done.
They do not "cover their tracks" so as to make it appear they were never there. They are intended leave the host computer in the state it was in before they were used.
If you are looking for "stealth" you are in the wrong place.
That's just not why we're here.
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
i was looking for a way to have my internetlinks, my emails, and my favorite programs with my prefered settings always with me - something (and more) that i found here at portable apps
If we all were looking for stealth programms, we all would have US Army approved IRON KEYS (I'm not sure if i'm allowed, to post the link to their site here) with the strongest encryption and self-destruction enabled and our apps would run on a strong encrypted Linux in a virtual machine, that is started in a sandbox or whatever,...
for my requirements normal deletion of any temporary data that are created when the program runs is completely enough,...
so you know what to do, start Eraser Portable after you used a PC with your Portable Apps and overwrite all the free Space on the Windows drive Gutmann Methode, while you drink a coffee are two. Then you can be sure, that nothing is left behind for any data recovery.
Right, because that makes a lot more sense in terms of speed as to just wiping a single file.
Doesn't matter, the owner of the site says he doesn't care. I'll just stick to my own programs that work much better than this.
I'll release my website soon so people have a much better option than these apps.
thanks for stopping by. Good luck with all that.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
Thanks, although your good luck would have meant a lot more months ago before everything was done.
I am more less collecting reasons why what I'm doing is better. I think that Tim's quote of:
"If you are looking for "stealth" you are in the wrong place."
Is absolutely perfect for the front page too.
Crumbles,
If you can write apps as good as the ones here and then make them stealth as well more power to you, seriously
Share them with us, please.
No one would object if wrote a useful program that wiped it's use from the host, it's just not a high priority.
As far as what you're doing being "better", that will have to be judged after you've done it
Good luck
By the way, you said:
"your good luck would have meant a lot more months ago before everything was done"
What are you referring to here as "done"
Best wishes,
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
you are also in the wrong place!
Should that also be on the front page?
It's unfortunate that you had the wrong impression of the purpose of this site, but there's no reason to be rude.
As Tim said, the purpose of this site is to provide PORTABLE apps, and it does it better than anywhere else. There are a lot of people that are working hard to find and adapt the best open source apps to be portable, and they are doing it exactly as intended - and the rest of us in this community are always willing to provide constructive criticism to improve them.
I'm sure that there is a small group of people out there that must have every app completely stealth, but so far, you are the first I've encountered. Most people are quite happy with a wide range of portable apps, that run from their flash drives, and are FOSS. And trust me, I talk this site up a lot!
In the spirit of constructive suggestions:
I suggest you download and burn a copy of KNOPPIX or a similar live Linux distro.
KNOPPIX has nearly every app you might need (OpenOffice, Firefox/Iceweasel, along with CD/DVD burning, multimedia software, etc).
It runs completely stealth - you don't even need a hard drive to run it.
Boot from the CD, plug in your flash drive to save your personal files, and you are good to go!
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
InfraRecorder itself creates and then deletes its own temp files... there's no way to alter this behavior without rewriting the program. So, even if we included a secure deletion package like the eraser command line, it wouldn't be able to do anything.
The temp files can be large as it is preparing writes to the CD/DVD in most cases won't fit on the portable device, plus most portable devices may not be fast enough to handle the temp files, anyway. So, keeping it on the portable device is simply not an option for most people.
In short, it's the best way to do it for 99% of users. In the upcoming PortableApps.com Platform release, you'll be able to keep the TEMP directory on your portable device (appropriate for portable hard drives and certain large/very fast flash drives).
As far as 'stealth' is concerned... anyone claiming that they have software that runs from a removal device that leaves 'no trace' or is 'stealth' is either:
A. Lying / Completely mistaken or misinformed
B. Trying to sell you something... or
C. Both
It's usually C.
The only possibility I am currently aware that comes close to the above is to reboot the machine from an external device into an operating system on that device (Knoppix, DSL, Puppy Linux, etc). Unfortunately, this is not possible on most publicly available PCs you come across (BIOS doesn't support it or has it specifically disabled), may not be able to get online from them (no linux support for wireless network card, etc), is not allowed on many PCs (owner doesn't permit you to do so), may be very slow (in the case of flash drives or CD-based OSes), etc. It's possible, but there are many caveats.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
For those who are uber-paranoid about data remanance, take a look at Recuva. The "final release" is still only beta-quality at the moment, but it's quite usable, FREE and portable (with the "Save all settings to INI file" option selected). If you run it on an NTFS filesystem that's been used for a while, prepare to be shocked.
So, Marc's suggestion to use Eraser Portable to wipe the unused portion of the disk was indeed a good suggestion for the concerned. You can save a LOT of time by deslecting the Cluster Tip option: it's necessary only if you're concerned about the chunks of past data that remain when the last cluster of a file doesn't contain as much data as it did when used by previous files. If you're running Eraser Portable immediately after a Portable Apps session, this shouldn't be a problem. Be sure to select both of the other Overwrite options.
For those who think Gutmann 35-pass is required (or useful) on modern drives, see this.
As for the pagefile... Not much you can do about that. Perhaps the Eraser folks could add a memory-cleaning option that allocs all available memory and fills it at page-length increments (an old thrashing trick) to force the maximum number of pages to be written to disk. You're still SOL with any data paged out by the OS or remaining processes, though.
In short, don't use untrusted machines for your top-secret activities.
-hea
What! :o You mean my copies of the plans to the nukes aren't safe! I am so outraged :evil: Darn it- shoot, I gotta run, I hear the feds coming now
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world