Internet Security

Eliminating activity traces

When working with the computer, a user’s actions are registered in the system. Saved data include the search queries entered by users and visited web sites, launched programs, opened and saved files, Microsoft Windows system event log, temporary files, etc.

All these sources of information about the user’s activity may contain confidential data (including passwords) and may become available to intruders for analysis. Frequently, the user has insufficient knowledge to prevent information being stolen from these sources.

Kaspersky Internet Security includes the Privacy Cleaner Wizard. This Wizard searches for traces of user activities in the system as well as for operation system settings, which contribute to the storing of information about user activity.

Please keep in mind that the data related to user activity in the system are accumulated all the time. The launch of any file, or the opening of any document is logged. The Microsoft Windows system log registers many events occurring in the system. For this reason, repeated running of the Privacy Cleaner Wizard may detect activity traces which were not cleaned up by the previous run of the Wizard. Some files, for example the Microsoft Windows log file, may be in use by the system while the Wizard is attempting to delete them. In order to delete these files, the Wizard will suggest that you restart the system. However, during the restart, these files may be re-created and detected again as activity traces.

The wizard consists of a series of screens (steps) navigated using the Back and Next buttons. To close the wizard once it completes its work, use the Finish button. To stop the wizard at any stage, use the Cancel button.

To start the Privacy Cleaner Wizard:

1. Open the main application window and select the Tools section in the left part of the window.
2. In the right part of the window, click the Erase Your Activities History button.

Detailed discussion of the wizard steps.

Starting the Wizard

Make sure the option Perform user’s activity traces diagnostics is selected and click the Next button to start the Wizard.

Searching for activity traces

This Wizard searches for traces of malware activities in your computer. The scan may take some time. Once the search is complete, the Wizard will proceed automatically to the next step.

Selecting the Privacy Cleaner actions

When the search is complete, the Wizard displays the detected activity traces and actions suggested to eliminate them. The Wizard activity report is displayed as a list.

To view the actions within a group, click the + icon to the left of the group name.

To make the Wizard perform a certain action, check the box to the left of the corresponding action name. By default, the Wizard performs all recommended and strongly recommended actions. If you do not wish to perform a certain action, uncheck the box next to it.

Unchecking the boxes selected by default is strongly discouraged because doing so will leave your computer vulnerable.

Having defined the set of actions, which the Wizard will perform, click the Next button.

Eliminating activity traces

The Wizard will perform the actions selected during the previous step. The elimination of activity traces may take some time. To clean up certain activity traces, computer restart may be required; the Wizard will notify you about that.

Once the clean-up is complete, the Wizard will proceed automatically to the next step.

Closing the Wizard

If you wish to clean up the traces of user activity automatically whenever Kaspersky Internet Security completes work, use the last screen of the Wizard to check the box Clean activity traces every time on Kaspersky Internet Security exit. If you plan to remove the activity traces manually using the Wizard, do not check this box.

Click the Finish button to close the Wizard.