Pornography found when recovering data from Hard Drive

Norton Security | Norton Internet Security
1

Recently, I had to recover data from the Hard Drive of an old computer, I was looking for pictures I couldn't find and that I had no reason to delete myself.  I downloaded a program called Digicam Photo Recovery, run it in the old computer and stored the restored pictures in an external Hard Drive.

 

When verifying that I could recover the pictures I was looking for I also saw porn pictures along with all kind of pictures from the computer.  We have a Norton  360 subscription since December 31, 2007.  We bought the computer on March 22, 2008.  It was a floor model PC we bought at BestBuy, an eMachines T5246 PC.

 

The last time I restored the system from the recovery CD was in November last year.

 

We have no explanation for those porn pictures found in the Hard Drive.  It is only two people those who could have had access to the PC and we don't access porn websites not even accidentally since we use Norton 360 all the time with the recommended security set up.

 

What I think is that those porn pictures had been in the Hard Drive all the time from the moment we bought the PC since it was a floor model PC.  We went to BestBuy and told them but they denied any possibility that that had happened and they didn't even touch the computer.

 

It seems to me that when you restore a PC only the Soft information is deleted but that the binary information remains hardrecorded in the Hard Drive.  It seems simple to 'resolve' the problem... perform a Hard Format of the HD.  The dilema is about the CPU id being somehow clasified in the 'internet system' as a porn PC ... I am not an expert, I am just speculating about the danger we might have been exposed to.

 

I found some utilities to extract information from the porn pictures...nothing found, no dates, no author, just maybe some information saying some were processed with Adobe Photoshop.

 

At first I thought of contacting the Police, later I thought maybe I could find out my self from the information in the pictures, next we went to BestBuy.

 

This Norton Community resource seems to be the last chance we have to deal with this upseting situation.  Please tell us what is what we should do in terms of keeping 'safe and secure' ....using this same home address and personal information about us we might have provided in good faith when visiting 'safe' websites.  What is what we should do with the 'infected' computers, the old one, and the new one.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Martha Gomez and Jeffrey Ebenstein

2

I do not think you have anything to worry about as to anyone getting any information from your PC.

 

Norton settingswill not prevent anyone from going to adult entertainment web sites unless you have installed Parental Controls.

 

As you said, it was probably on the hard drive when you purchased it. Someone testing the computer, or an employee on a slow day may have viewed something they should not have.

 

How it survived the years of your use is unusual, as files are written, erased and written over again, and the chance of something lasting since 2008 is quite slim.

 

Was your recovery CD a complete factory restore, or just a restore of your data?

 

Where did you get the external HD? Is it possible it had been used by someone else?

3

(This is the second try ... the first post didn't go through)

 

Norton 360 December 31, 2007, Windows Vista.

 

Early this year I bought a more powerful new HP PC. I had to move some information from an old eMachines T5246 PC to the new PC. 

I was looking for some pictures. I couldn't find the folders, some of them had been deleted. I didn't do it. We bought that PC at BestBuy 

as a floor model PC on 03/22/08.

 

I used Aliensign Digicam Photo Recovery to recover all the images in the emachines PC. I found the pictures I was looking for, a lot of 

images and some porn pictures. The reason we bought Norton 360 it was to prevent any unwanted exposure when accessing the internet 

so that is exactly what I didn't expect to encounter. I am assuming the porn pictures were already in the PC, hard recorded in the 

Hard Drive (digital information) when we bought it. BestBuy reinstalled the system before releasing the PC to us (an open box). I think 

when you format a HDD and restore a system you still can leave some 'information' recorded as binary information. 

 

If that was so, a previous user of the computer was the one responsible for all those porn pictures in the PC. The exposure that I see is 

that internet surveillance systems might have your PC 'identified' and linked to all kind of personal information, address, name, jobs, etc.

 

I didn't know what to do. At first I thought of calling the police, later I thought that the best option was to ask BestBuy. I copied the porn 

pictures to the new PC to try to extract information from them, dates, websites ... they don't have any date, or any other information. 

Some were processed with Adobe Photoshop. We took the PC to BestBuy but they didn't even touch it. They say that when they restore 

a system all the information is deleted.

 

I haven't done anything else with the eMachines computer. I know I could hard format the HDD and restore the system and get rid of 

the porn pictures in the HDD. The problem is that somehow we might have been linked to the PC Id and that garbage on an internet 

surveillance system. What is what needs to be done then?

 

Read the following article to see that I am not so wrong about my thinking: http://on.rt.com/jkybs8

 

Since we trusted our safety and security to Norton 360 from Symantec, could you please tell us what is your recommendation?

 

Best regards,

 

Martha P. Gomez

 

4

Hi Martha,

 

Your first post did go thru and Peterweb answered it.

 

It is located here:  http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-360/Pornography-found-when-recovering-data-from-Hard-Drive/m-p/795474

 

Please post any more comments in that thread in order to keep the info in one place.

5
Martha_Gomez wrote:

(This is the second try ... the first post didn't go through)

 

Norton 360 December 31, 2007, Windows Vista.

 

Early this year I bought a more powerful new HP PC. I had to move some information from an old eMachines T5246 PC to the new PC. 

I was looking for some pictures. I couldn't find the folders, some of them had been deleted. I didn't do it. We bought that PC at BestBuy 

as a floor model PC on 03/22/08.

 

I used Aliensign Digicam Photo Recovery to recover all the images in the emachines PC. I found the pictures I was looking for, a lot of 

images and some porn pictures. The reason we bought Norton 360 it was to prevent any unwanted exposure when accessing the internet 

so that is exactly what I didn't expect to encounter. I am assuming the porn pictures were already in the PC, hard recorded in the 

Hard Drive (digital information) when we bought it. BestBuy reinstalled the system before releasing the PC to us (an open box). I think 

when you format a HDD and restore a system you still can leave some 'information' recorded as binary information. 

 

If that was so, a previous user of the computer was the one responsible for all those porn pictures in the PC. The exposure that I see is 

that internet surveillance systems might have your PC 'identified' and linked to all kind of personal information, address, name, jobs, etc.

 

I didn't know what to do. At first I thought of calling the police, later I thought that the best option was to ask BestBuy. I copied the porn 

pictures to the new PC to try to extract information from them, dates, websites ... they don't have any date, or any other information. 

Some were processed with Adobe Photoshop. We took the PC to BestBuy but they didn't even touch it. They say that when they restore 

a system all the information is deleted.

 

I haven't done anything else with the eMachines computer. I know I could hard format the HDD and restore the system and get rid of 

the porn pictures in the HDD. The problem is that somehow we might have been linked to the PC Id and that garbage on an internet 

surveillance system. What is what needs to be done then?

 

Read the following article to see that I am not so wrong about my thinking: http://on.rt.com/jkybs8

 

Since we trusted our safety and security to Norton 360 from Symantec, could you please tell us what is your recommendation?

 

Best regards,

 

Martha P. Gomez

 

If I am understanding this correctly, you are disappointed that N 360 did not protect you from undesirable photos you recovered with photo recovery software.

No security software is going to prevent\protect that from happening when you recovered the files yourself.

 

I would bet that Best Buy took that machine as a return and factory restored it, which is the normal. All that factory restore does is restore the PC to the way it came from the factory.

Data recovery can recover files that have been deleted. Even when a hard drive is restored to a factory state, files can be recovered.

Aside from physically destroying the hard drive, the only way to completely make files unrecoverable is to zero fill the hard drive, which is what Best Buy obviously did not do, probably because of time.

 

I highly doubt you need to worry about that "internet surveillance", if you are not going to sites that provide the porn.

 

I would suggest getting CCleaner http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download . It is free and it has a utility to wipe free space on your hard drive, that should suffice in making the files be unrecoverable.

 

Your link when to an article titled: "Anonymous FBI laptop hack nets 12 million Apple iOS users' data".