The company says that simply deleting the files and cookies does not remove the information from the computer. For complete security, these temporary files and cookies should be shredded beyond recognition. True to the words, ParetoLogic Privacy Controls offers several shredding options that go up to the US Military Standards.
The official webpage of the ParetoLogic Privacy Controls lists a number of items that it claims to remove from your computer once you run the scan. These include activities related to Internet Explorer. The software also claims to clean all traces related to P2P applications such as Limeware, Bit Torrent Clients, uTorrent, Azuerus, and Kazaa. Besides, ParetoLogic Privacy Controls can also clean leftover traces from Instant Messaging programs such as Skype, AOL, Windows Messenger, Yahoo, Gmail and many others.
The Co founder of ParetoLogic, Don Wharter, says in a press release that it is necessary to use the Privacy Cleaner even if you are intending to sell off your computer because there are ways by which the person who buys your computer can recover the leftover data to misuse it.
Currently the ParetoLogic Privacy Controls software tool is available in eight languages serving more than 70 countries around the world. The tool, as per the co-founder, is a marriage of sophisticated technology with user-friendly interface.
Several programs on the Internet claim that they can completely protect your privacy and prevent others from tracing your computer usage. ParetoLogic Privacy Controls also claims the same but with the additional offer of US Defense style cleaning. I downloaded the software to test the program and the degree to which it can keep your computer experience, a secret.
System Requirements as per the Download site: The company recommends Pentium III or above processor with a minimum of 216 MB RAM, 20 MB HDD space, and an internet connection on Windows 2000 or later. The speed of the connection is not mentioned on the Product webpage so I assume it can also be downloaded using a Dial-Up connection. I am saying this because I was able to get the software in 8 minutes on a 256 Kbps connection. On Dial-ups, it should be around 20 minutes on low traffic lines.
Computer Used to Test ParetoLogic Privacy Controls: The Windows XP Pro laptop I used to test the software had only 512 MB of RAM. It had the Intel Celeron processor of 1.6 GHz. The Hard Disk size was 80 GB. In addition, the broadband connected to the laptop offered the speed of 256 Kbps.
Downloading ParetoLogic Privacy Controls - The ParetoLogic Privacy Controls did not take much time to download though I did not use any of the download accelerators. It took approximately 8 minutes to download ParetoLogic Privacy Controls using the simple Microsoft Internet Explorer’s download system. The size of the download is 5601 KB or 5.4 MB. If you use any of the Internet Download Accelerators, you should be able to download it within 5 minutes on broadband and within 15 minutes on Dial-up connections.
Installation of ParetoLogic Privacy Controls: The installation started as soon as the download completed. The entire installation process took approximately 4 minutes on the laptop. It was smooth without many keystrokes. As with other programs, it asked for acceptance of the EULA and the installation folder. You need not do anything after that. It installs automatically. When I tried to check the uninstallation time, it was even less: around 3 minutes.
Upon successful installation of the ParetoLogic Privacy Controls, it creates two scheduled tasks. One is for a periodic check of updates while the other is for regular unattended scanning. You can change the time of scheduled scan by clicking on the icon in Scheduled Tasks Folder. To access this folder, click on the Start Menu, All Programs, Accessories, and then System Tools. So far, there were no problems with the program. Let us check out the effectiveness of the program in the next section.