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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Kim Komando

Aired January 19, 2003 - 09:21   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Time now for tech talk, and a look at Internet privacy. Today, we focus on how you can protect the data you have on your hard drive and learn how and where you leave Internet footprints when you're surfing the net. As always, we turn now to our digital goddess, Kim Komando. She's the author of "The 50 Biggest Computer Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them." She's also the host of her own national talk radio talk show. She's a newspaper columnist. Do you ever get any time off, Kim?
KIM KOMANDO, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: No, not with you people.

O'BRIEN: Well, it's good to see you.

KOMANDO: My pleasure, really.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk -- part of what got us thinking about this is was this terrible story about Pete Townshend. And we don't need to get into the sordid details there. But let's just talk in general, when you're surfing the Web, generally, and I'm not talking about doing a transaction here, if you're just surfing sites, are you doing it anonymously or not?

KOMANDO: No, not at all. A lot of people think they are surfing anonymously, but traces are left all over. Like, for example, in your browser, the places where you go, the addresses that you type in. In addition to that, if you ever open anything up in your computer, let's say you download an image, traces of that are left on your computer. In addition to that, every computer on the Internet has what's called an IP number, it's kind of like a telephone number. And that number identifies you to the Internet. So if you ever think that you're surfing anonymously, the truth is that you're not.

O'BRIEN: So in other words, not only does your computer at home keep a record of where you've been and what you've been downloading, but also where you've been, those servers would probably lodge that little IP number and if somebody wanted to find out where you'd been, you could do that?

KOMANDO: Absolutely. I mean, for example we had a case with the "Kim Komando Show" where some fan thought that he was helping me out by sending out all these mass e-mails saying, your station needs to pick up "The Kim Komando Show." Well, it was kind of upsetting some of the radio stations, so we ended up finding his IP number, which is always in the headers of the e-mail, and then contacting his ISP, who then shut him off. So if you think you're anonymous, you're not. O'BRIEN: Now, that was e-mail. We were talking about surfing a minute ago. Is there a distinction that we need to make between e- mail and whether it can be traced, as opposed to just random browsing?

KOMANDO: Not really, because when you are surfing, you're leaving traces too. And those IP numbers, anytime you hit a Web site, if you ever wondered how they know when you come back, that's traced not only to your IP number, but also to the cookies file that's also located on your hard drive.

O'BRIEN: All right. We have a magical graphic screen which you can't see, Kim. It's just over your right shoulder. Well, now it's over my right shoulder. It says where the traces are left, your browser's history, temporary files and auto complete entries. Where do you find those if you want to clean them up, what do you do?

KOMANDO: Well, if you want to clean them up, there are certain programs that you can buy, like one is called Cookie Washer, Window Washer. But if you go to Microsoft.com or even to my Web site, Komando.com, there's something called Tweak UI, and it's free...

O'BRIEN: Say it again. Say it again. What is it?

KOMANDO: It's called Tweak UI. Have you ever heard of that?

O'BRIEN: No.

KOMANDO: It's called Power Toys (ph). And inside there, there are like all these cool things that should have been inside Windows. Like one for example is how to remove all those little shortcut icons off of the shortcuts on your desktop. But they also have something called the paranoia tab. And on the paranoia tab, you can erase, any time you close your browser, you can erase all the cookies and the cache files and the history files, and also one of those entries is to remove all the entries in the most recently used document list.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now, let's look at this other graphic. Erasing your tracks. Let's talk about this for just a moment if we can put the graphic up. And the first thing is -- what have we got here? I don't even understand this graphic. Forget it. Oh, here it is, Wipeeraser. What is that?

KOMANDO: See, this is all going back to a story that happened in the news this past week. There were two MIT students that went out on Ebay in local computer stores and purchased, I don't know, some 150- odd hard drives, and they found that most of them, even though they were formatted, they could retrieve some of the data, and they retrieved things like letters and entries to porno sites. They actually found porn. They found credit card numbers, transactions for a particular ATM machine.

And so the bottom line here is that if you have a used computer, and a lot of people do this time of year, because maybe they got a new one for the holiday season, that just don't think that if you erase everything, the data's gone for good. Even if you format the drive, which a lot of people think that's good enough, it's still not good enough. Because if somebody wants to actually get the data back, they can. But by using...

O'BRIEN: Even though it's formatted? I thought that sort of just wiped out the disk. Not so?

KOMANDO: Not so, because the data's still there. They can recover it with certain tools. And so what you need to use are one of these programs that are shown on the graphic that will go in there and overwrite that data with ones and zeros.

As a matter of fact, when the government wants to destroy the data on their hard drives, they actually take a hammer and destroy the physical hard drive itself in order to really get rid of the data.

O'BRIEN: Well, would you suggest that for some people who have sensitive data, as opposed to giving the computer to someone else, would just get out a sledgehammer?

KOMANDO: It really depends what you have on the computer. I mean, if you have all these credit card numbers, like there was a gal that bought a used computer that had 2,000 credit card numbers on it. And another person...

O'BRIEN: Boy, she must have had some bills. Wow!

KOMANDO: But imagine the shock, opening up a hard drive and finding all this stuff there. But it really depends who you're giving the computer to. If you're giving it to a family member, you know, obviously, maybe if you just format the drive that could be good enough, because you know they're not going to do you any harm. But if you are giving the computer away to a charity or maybe even to your church or somebody that you don't know, you really need to take the extra precautions.

O'BRIEN: Good words to the wise here. Kim Komando, thank you very much. Always a pleasure to check in with the digital goddess up there in Arizona.

KOMANDO: Thanks, Miles.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired January 19, 2003 - 09:21   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Time now for tech talk, and a look at Internet privacy. Today, we focus on how you can protect the data you have on your hard drive and learn how and where you leave Internet footprints when you're surfing the net. As always, we turn now to our digital goddess, Kim Komando. She's the author of "The 50 Biggest Computer Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them." She's also the host of her own national talk radio talk show. She's a newspaper columnist. Do you ever get any time off, Kim?
KIM KOMANDO, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: No, not with you people.

O'BRIEN: Well, it's good to see you.

KOMANDO: My pleasure, really.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk -- part of what got us thinking about this is was this terrible story about Pete Townshend. And we don't need to get into the sordid details there. But let's just talk in general, when you're surfing the Web, generally, and I'm not talking about doing a transaction here, if you're just surfing sites, are you doing it anonymously or not?

KOMANDO: No, not at all. A lot of people think they are surfing anonymously, but traces are left all over. Like, for example, in your browser, the places where you go, the addresses that you type in. In addition to that, if you ever open anything up in your computer, let's say you download an image, traces of that are left on your computer. In addition to that, every computer on the Internet has what's called an IP number, it's kind of like a telephone number. And that number identifies you to the Internet. So if you ever think that you're surfing anonymously, the truth is that you're not.

O'BRIEN: So in other words, not only does your computer at home keep a record of where you've been and what you've been downloading, but also where you've been, those servers would probably lodge that little IP number and if somebody wanted to find out where you'd been, you could do that?

KOMANDO: Absolutely. I mean, for example we had a case with the "Kim Komando Show" where some fan thought that he was helping me out by sending out all these mass e-mails saying, your station needs to pick up "The Kim Komando Show." Well, it was kind of upsetting some of the radio stations, so we ended up finding his IP number, which is always in the headers of the e-mail, and then contacting his ISP, who then shut him off. So if you think you're anonymous, you're not. O'BRIEN: Now, that was e-mail. We were talking about surfing a minute ago. Is there a distinction that we need to make between e- mail and whether it can be traced, as opposed to just random browsing?

KOMANDO: Not really, because when you are surfing, you're leaving traces too. And those IP numbers, anytime you hit a Web site, if you ever wondered how they know when you come back, that's traced not only to your IP number, but also to the cookies file that's also located on your hard drive.

O'BRIEN: All right. We have a magical graphic screen which you can't see, Kim. It's just over your right shoulder. Well, now it's over my right shoulder. It says where the traces are left, your browser's history, temporary files and auto complete entries. Where do you find those if you want to clean them up, what do you do?

KOMANDO: Well, if you want to clean them up, there are certain programs that you can buy, like one is called Cookie Washer, Window Washer. But if you go to Microsoft.com or even to my Web site, Komando.com, there's something called Tweak UI, and it's free...

O'BRIEN: Say it again. Say it again. What is it?

KOMANDO: It's called Tweak UI. Have you ever heard of that?

O'BRIEN: No.

KOMANDO: It's called Power Toys (ph). And inside there, there are like all these cool things that should have been inside Windows. Like one for example is how to remove all those little shortcut icons off of the shortcuts on your desktop. But they also have something called the paranoia tab. And on the paranoia tab, you can erase, any time you close your browser, you can erase all the cookies and the cache files and the history files, and also one of those entries is to remove all the entries in the most recently used document list.

O'BRIEN: All right. Now, let's look at this other graphic. Erasing your tracks. Let's talk about this for just a moment if we can put the graphic up. And the first thing is -- what have we got here? I don't even understand this graphic. Forget it. Oh, here it is, Wipeeraser. What is that?

KOMANDO: See, this is all going back to a story that happened in the news this past week. There were two MIT students that went out on Ebay in local computer stores and purchased, I don't know, some 150- odd hard drives, and they found that most of them, even though they were formatted, they could retrieve some of the data, and they retrieved things like letters and entries to porno sites. They actually found porn. They found credit card numbers, transactions for a particular ATM machine.

And so the bottom line here is that if you have a used computer, and a lot of people do this time of year, because maybe they got a new one for the holiday season, that just don't think that if you erase everything, the data's gone for good. Even if you format the drive, which a lot of people think that's good enough, it's still not good enough. Because if somebody wants to actually get the data back, they can. But by using...

O'BRIEN: Even though it's formatted? I thought that sort of just wiped out the disk. Not so?

KOMANDO: Not so, because the data's still there. They can recover it with certain tools. And so what you need to use are one of these programs that are shown on the graphic that will go in there and overwrite that data with ones and zeros.

As a matter of fact, when the government wants to destroy the data on their hard drives, they actually take a hammer and destroy the physical hard drive itself in order to really get rid of the data.

O'BRIEN: Well, would you suggest that for some people who have sensitive data, as opposed to giving the computer to someone else, would just get out a sledgehammer?

KOMANDO: It really depends what you have on the computer. I mean, if you have all these credit card numbers, like there was a gal that bought a used computer that had 2,000 credit card numbers on it. And another person...

O'BRIEN: Boy, she must have had some bills. Wow!

KOMANDO: But imagine the shock, opening up a hard drive and finding all this stuff there. But it really depends who you're giving the computer to. If you're giving it to a family member, you know, obviously, maybe if you just format the drive that could be good enough, because you know they're not going to do you any harm. But if you are giving the computer away to a charity or maybe even to your church or somebody that you don't know, you really need to take the extra precautions.

O'BRIEN: Good words to the wise here. Kim Komando, thank you very much. Always a pleasure to check in with the digital goddess up there in Arizona.

KOMANDO: Thanks, Miles.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com