...where data traces means "stuff left behind in buffers, the paging file, on disk or anywhere except your thumb drive or other removable media."
I have a TrueCrypted 2gb thumb drive with the PortableApps suite installed. I find myself automatically using Windows Notepad to edit stuff I like to think of as secured on my thumb drive. I have no idea what (if any) mechanisms Notepad has to avoid leaving data traces on the host system, wherever that may be, so I googled and found Steganos LockNote.
LockNote looks pretty good, it comes from a SourceForge project and so I'm assuming that it's fully Open Source which is a must for security software in my opinion.
Does anybody have any comments on LockNote as a portable app, or other data-trace-minimizing open source notepad alternatives to contrast with it?
Another question: I'm assuming that "portable app" does not necessarily imply "data-trace-minimizing". Is there anything I should know about the traces that the various portable apps hosted here might leave? Is there any study published on the subject? I'm keen on security, encryption and data trace minimization because of all the identity theft going on, and I've heard from friends how disruptive it is: don't want to go there. Hence my interest, and my deep suspicion of the massive use of free email, contact book and calendaring services, and web-hosted remote PC access. Am I the only one out here that doesn't consider these an unmixed blessing?
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Everything you use leaves a few things behind on the PC you're running from. Every app you run, even from removable storage, gets an entry in the Windows XP pre-fetch. This affects every portable app method. There's no easy way to fix this other than wiping the prefetch on exit, which only admins can do.
Some apps will update the recent documents list as well. I'm working on a clearer for that but that will come later.
A couple apps will leave a non-personal bit behind as well. The current Firefox Portable release leaves behind a single file within Documents and Settings. A registry of plugins installed to the local machine. This is mentioned in the Known Issues for the app and will be fixed in the next release.
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