Using Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0

Using Acronis
Privacy Expert Suite 9.0

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By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted May 2007

This article is designed to help you install and start to use Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 in a short period of time and with minimal effort. Hopefully, it will have you actively protecting your computer from Spyware and Hacker Tools quickly.

Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 has two main functions. First, it is an excellent utility to find and remove Spyware and Hacker Tools from your computer’s hard drive. Second, it will help you keep your computer clean of many types of files that hackers are looking for. A clean computer is less interesting to hackers and may be less of a target for them to attack.

Installing Privacy Expert Suite

Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 can be installed in either of two ways. First, you can download the software from the Acronis web site and install the downloaded software on your computer. Or, you can install the software directly from a CD, if you received the software on a CD. Either way will work just fine. We will briefly explain the steps involved to do both for you to follow.

Download Installation: To download Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0, you need to go to the Acronis web site and follow a three step procedure to setup an account, register your product, and download the software.

The first step is to setup an account on the Acronis web site. To do this, go to www.acronis.com and click on My Account in the upper right corner of the screen. Next, set up an account by filling out the center portion of the screen under the Register Now heading and click on the Continue button to access your account. If you have already set up an account with Acronis, then you need to logon to your account on the right side of this screen.

The second step is to register your product serial number in your account. To do this logon to your account and then select the Product Registration link in the left margin of the screen. This will take you to the registration screen where you will key-in your product serial number for Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 exactly as you received it, including the dashes. Once you have entered the serial number correctly, click on the Register button to complete the registration.

The third step is to download the software and install Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 on your computer. To do this logon to your account and then select the Registered Product link in the left margin of the screen. Next, click on the plus (+) in the blue bar next to Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 to show additional information about this product. Finally, click on the Download Installation File link to start the download of your installation software for Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0. This file is only 46MB in size and should download to your computer in just a few minutes.

Click on Run to both download the software and install it on your computer in one easy step. Follow the instructions to complete the installation. Normally, you should select the default options when given a choice. During the installation, you will have to enter your serial number again. Enter this number exactly as it is printed with the dashes included. You should complete the download and installation of Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 in just a few minutes.

CD Installation: To install Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 from the CD you received from User Group Relations, simply load the CD in your computer and in a few seconds you will see the options screen. Click on the Install Privacy Expert Suite button to select that option. This will bring you to the product installation screen. Click on the Install Acronis Privacy Expert Suite button to start the actual install of the product. Follow the instructions to complete the installation. Normally, you should select the default options when given a choice. During the installation, you will have to enter your serial number. Enter this number exactly as it is printed with the dashes included. You should complete the installation of Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 from a CD in less than a minute or two.

Removing Spyware from your Computer

One of the two main reasons for using Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 is to find and remove Spyware and/or Hacker Tools that have been placed on your computer without your knowledge. These are serious threats to your privacy and the performance of your computer. Using an excellent utility like Privacy Expert Suite is very important to do regularly. This part of the article will help you setup and run the Spyware detection function in Privacy Expert Suite.

To properly protect your computer from Spyware and Hacker Tools, two things must be done on a regular basis. First, you must download descriptions of the hundreds of Spyware and Hacker Tools that may be on your computer. Then, you must scan your computer to find and remove any of these Spyware and Hacker Tools that have gotten on your computer. I recommend that you do these two steps on a daily basis to adequately protect your computer. We will do these two steps manually to begin with, but later we will show you how to set these up to run automatically without your having to think about them.

Update Malicious Software Removal: Start Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 running on your computer. Click on the Malicious Software Removal button to get to that part of the software that deals with malicious software. On the Malicious Software Removal screen you will see four functions that can be selected. Click on the Update Malicious Software Definitions button to start the download of these important definitions. You will need to be connected to the Internet to do this step. Select Update the Database Now to start to download the definitions that have been published in the past few days or weeks.

The first time you do this, you will have hundreds of definitions that need to be downloaded. This will take a bit of time to complete, so do this when you have a few minutes to spare. Watch how many new definitions are provided by Acronis each day. Acronis provides a more complete collection of these malicious software definitions than most Spyware products do. This is the real power of this excellent utility. Later, as you download the new definitions each day, this step will run very quickly.

Configure Malicious Software Removal Options: After you have updated the database of malicious software definitions, you need to configure the way Privacy Expert Suite scans for the malicious software. To do this click on the Configure Malicious Software Removal Options. Next, you select to do either a Smart Scan or a Deep Scan. Normally, a Smart Scan is adequate, but you may want to do a Deep Scan to begin with to make sure you have totally cleaned your computer. Just be warned that a Deep Scan may take many minutes to complete, so you may want to run this at the end of the day and just let it run into the night.

Remove Malicious Software Now: Having downloaded the latest definitions and configured the type of scan that you want to run, it is time to start your first scan. To do this, click on the Remove Malicious Software Now button to start the scan. You can watch as Privacy Expert Suite looks for the various Spyware and Hacker Tools by their named definitions. This could be a long process, so you may want to do it when your computer is not needed for other tasks for a while.

When the scan completes, it will tell you how many Malicious Software Threats it found and if you click on the plus (+) sign, it will show you all of the bad files it found. The first time you do this on your computer, you may find hundreds of malicious software on your computer. Once you start to clean it on a regular basis, the number of malicious software found each day will be fewer.

Notice that there is a check box next to each malicious software item found. If you do not want to remove that item in the next step, uncheck that box and that malicious software will be left on your computer. I’m not sure why you would want to leave this bad stuff on your computer, but that option is available to you if you want to do this. Click on the Next button to go to the Removal screen. On this screen, you can click on the Proceed button to remove all of the malicious software found and listed on the prior screen.

The fourth button on the Malicious Software Removal screen is titled, Quarantine. This lets you control the Quarantine area of Privacy Expert Suite. All malicious software that is removed from your computer is placed in the Quarantine area. You can either clear this area of all quarantined items or list the quarantined items so that you can select which ones to restore. This is just a safety measure. If Privacy Expert Suite finds and removes something that you need, you can go to the quarantine area and restore it to your computer. Personally, I have never needed to use this feature, but it is there for my protection if I want to use it.

Automatic Removal of Malicious Software: We all have too many activities in our lives to remember to manually remove the malicious software from our computers, so you should set up Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 to do this for you automatically. That way you know that your computer is being cleaned on a regular basis and that malicious software is not running on your computer.

When is the best time to remove malicious software from your computer? My preference is to do this function in the middle of the night when my computer is probably sitting idle. I leave my computer running both day and night and seldom shut it down. With the Power Management facilities in newer computers, the computer almost shuts itself down when idle, but it can wake up to do important tasks as needed. If you prefer to shut your computer down each day, then you can have Privacy Expert Suite run on shutdown or startup of your computer.

Automatic Download Definition Files: To schedule automatic web updates of your important definition files, click on the Web Updates link on the left side of the main Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 screen. Select the Update Automatic option and then Next to continue setting this up. On the next screen I would recommend that you select the Daily option. Spyware and Hacker Tools can attack and damage your computer very quickly. Doing a Weekly or Monthly update is not fast enough to stop these fast moving hacker tools. Click on Next to continue.

On the next screen, you specify what time each day you wish to download the new definitions that day. I would pick a time in the middle of the night, say 1:00am and then check the box under the time. This will download the definition files the next time you start your computer if you forgot and didn’t leave it running for the download. I would perform this task daily, so check that option. You can leave the User Information screen blank and continue to the Proceed button to complete the setup of this automatic download of your definition files.

Automatic Scan Computer: To schedule the automatic scanning of your computer for Spyware and Hacker Tools, you need to click on the Schedule a Task option on the left side of your main Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 screen. Then you need to select Malicious Software from the long lists of different scheduled tasks you could set up. On the screen where you select when to do this task, select Daily. On the next screen, select the time that you want the scan to occur. I would pick a time in the middle of the night shortly after the time you picked to download the latest definition files. For example, you might pick 1:30am since our example above has us downloading the definition files at 1:00am. Again, I would leave the User Information blank. That should complete the scheduling of your scan for malicious software.

That completes the steps to download your Malicious Software definition files and to scan and remove Malicious Software from your computer. Next we will look at the ways to keep your computer clean of information that a hacker may be looking for on your computer.

Keeping your Computer Clean of Private Information

The use of this function in Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 is less critical than the Removal of Malicious Software from your computer. I normally clean my computer about once a month and always do this manually, when I have time to do this housecleaning. I recommend that you take a full backup of your computer before doing any housecleaning of your computer. This will protect you against accidentally removing the wrong files from your computer. See my paper, the Perfect Backup Approach at www.ugr.com/newsletters.html to understand the best way to make backups.

Cleaning files from your computer with Privacy Expert Suite will permanently wipe the files and not just simply delete the files. Wiping a file writes blanks over the top of the prior information, thereby obliterating the information written there before. Deleting files, simply flags the files as deleted, but does not permanently remove the files as the wipe function does. This is a much safer way of removing information from your computer than using Windows to delete the information saved.

To clean your computer of unwanted files, run Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 and click on one of the three Clean-up tools listed – Internet Clean-up, System Clean-up, and Application Traces Clean-up. All three of these clean-up tools work about the same way. So, when you understand how to run one of these clean-up tools, you will be able to use all three of these clean-up tools. Let me give you a word of warning at this point. There is an icon titled, My Privacy Tools, that is listed with the three Clean-up tools. This is not one of the Clean-up tools and needs to be used with more caution than the other three. I will cover this tool separately.

Internet Clean-up: This clean-up tool cleans up traces of your internet visits and surfing traces. It is one of the most useful of the three clean-up tools. There are nine separate areas relating to the Internet that you can clean-up using this tool. You can clean-up just selected areas by clicking on the icon you want under Pick a Clean-up Component Icon. Each component will clean-up only its area and not affect the other components. Or you can clean-up many of the nine areas with one click. Hence, you can be very selective at what you clean-up on your computer. Here are the nine components and what they clean-up:

Internet Cache – Your Internet browser maintains a cache of all of the web pages you have visited recently and all of the parts of those web pages. Saving these web pages in the cache speeds up the display of that page the next time you visit it. You would be surprised at the thousands of web pages that may be stored in this cache. By clicking on this tool, you can see a list of these web pages and delete all of them or just selected pages. This cache takes up a lot of hard drive space and needs to be cleaned out from time to time.

Cookies – As you browse the Internet, some web pages will store cookies on your computer. There are good cookies and bad cookies. The good cookies will help your computer remember thing about you to make your use of web sites friendlier. The bad cookies will watch what you do on your computer and report that to a marketing firm that may send you lots of unwanted promotional information. The trick is to keep the good cookies and delete the bad cookies. This tool will delete all of them unless you specify which ones to keep.

Downloaded Components – Some web sites require special modules to run while viewing that web site. These modules are downloaded to this area to be used when you need them. The problem with these modules is that some of them can be used by hackers to break into your computer. If you clean them, they can be downloaded again the next time you need them.

Last Visited Pages – Your Internet browser will keep a list of the last pages you have visited for historical use. The problem is that others can see what pages you have visited recently unless you clean this area.

Typed URLs – Your Internet browser keeps a list of all URLs that you have typed into the address field of your browser. If you start to type in the same address again at a later time, the address will be shown to you and you can select it instead of typing it in again. Again, this shows others what web sites you visit.

Internet Passwords – This information is especially private and should be cleaned often. Using tools such as WhiteCanyon’s MySecurityVault Pro will prevent these passwords from being saved on your computer.

Forms AutoComplete – When you fill out forms on the Internet, the information you place in certain fields is remembered for the next time you fill out a similar form on the Internet. This area can contain lots of private information that hackers can find and use. This information should be cleaned often. Using tools such as WhiteCanyon’s MySecurityVault Pro will prevent these passwords from being saved on your computer.

E-mail Messages – This works with Outlook and Outlook Express email clients only. It shows you certain deleted email messages that are in your email folders and lets you delete these. You can set up special filters to find and delete certain message if you want to. I would use this clean-up cautiously since I do not want to lose any of my important email messages.

E-mail Contacts – This works with Outlook and Outlook Express to clean-up your address book and contacts list. You can set filters to find and remove any entries by certain names and such. Again, I would use this cautiously since my address book entries are important to me.

If you want to Clean-up many of these Internet components in one easy step, you can setup which components you want to run in the Configure Clean-up Options function. Once you have configured just those components that you want to run, then you can simply click on the Clean Now task to clean-up all of the Internet areas you have selected in one click of your mouse. So, configure it the way you want to run it and then click on the Clean Now to do the cleaning.

You can also automate the cleaning of your Internet areas by configuring your Internet clean-up options and then click on the Schedule a Task on the left side of the Privacy Expert Suite screen. Select the Internet Clean-up item to automate or you can schedule each of the nine separate Internet clean-up components to run at different times. This is extremely flexible and can be tailored to exactly what you want to do.

System Clean-up: This clean-up tool cleans any information that is not Internet related that Windows has stored on your system. This information is saved on your hard drive and can be accessible to hackers to retrieve. There are ten areas that can be cleaned up in this tool either individually or with the Clean Now button. These areas are as follows:

Recycle Bin – When Windows deletes a file from your computer, it places that deleted file in the recycle bin. This gives you the opportunity to retrieve the file later if you decide you did not want to delete it. However, if you have a sensitive file that you want permanently deleted, it can still be found in the recycle bin. By emptying the recycle bin, you will no longer be able to access that file with Windows, however, that file is still located on your hard drive and hackers can find that file and read it. Privacy Expert Suite will wipe the contents of that file so that hackers cannot retrieve it and read the information in that file.

Temporary Files – Windows and other programs will save temporary files on your computer as they are performing a task. Often, these temporary files are not deleted when Windows or the program ends. Over time, your hard drive may have thousands of temporary files left behind on it. These may be a security risk or a performance problem. You should clean these temporary files on a regular basis.

Hard Disk Free Space – When you delete a file from your hard drive, the file is placed in the Windows Recycle Bin as a safe guard. You can still access the file with Windows and place it back in active use. To delete it from Windows, you must empty the Trash Bin. This will mark the file as deleted in the hard drive directory and Windows can no longer access that file. The file is still physically left on your hard drive, waiting for the space it is using to be used by some other file. It may be many weeks or months before this space is used for some other purpose. During that time, a Hacker with the right tools can see all of this deleted information on your hard drive. So, you need to wipe these deleted files with blanks to permanently obliterate them from your computer. This Clean-up tool will do this wiping for you of these deleted files.

Find Computers List – When you search for a computer in Windows Explorer, the computer that you were looking for is remembered in the Find Computer List. This tool removes these entries from this list.

Find Files List – When you search for a file in Windows Explorer, the file and path that you were looking for is remembered in the Find Files List. This tool removes these entries from this list.

Recently Used Documents List – Windows stores files and documents that you have recently used in the Recently Used Document List. This tool removes these entries from this list.

Windows Run List – Windows stores the programs that you have recently run in the Windows Run List. This tool removes these entries from this list.

Opened/Saved Files History – Windows stores the files that you have recently opened or saved in the Opened/Saved Files History list. This tool removes these entries from this list.

System Passwords – Windows stores all System Passwords that the user has used in this list. This tool removes these entries from this list.

Windows Prefetch Directory – Windows remembers the location of programs that you have recently used and stores this information in the Windows Prefetch Directory. This tool cleans up the entries in this list.

If you want to Clean-up many of these Systems components in one easy step, you can setup which components you want to run in the Configure Clean-up Options function. Once you have configured just those components that you want to run, then you can simply click on the Clean Now task to clean-up all of the System areas you have selected in one click of your mouse. So, configure it the way you want to run it and then click on the Clean Now to do the cleaning.

You can also automate the cleaning of your Systems areas by configuring your System clean-up options and then click on the Schedule a Task on the left side of the Privacy Expert Suite screen. Select the System Clean-up item to automate or you can schedule each of the ten separate System clean-up components to run at different times. This is extremely flexible and can be tailored to exactly what you want to do.

Application Traces Clean-up: The last of the three clean-up tools will clean off your computer any indication of the Application Programs that you have recently used on your computer. With this Clean-up tool, you only have the one Clean Now option to clean all traces of the applications you have run. It does this by cleaning up the recently used file list of most popular applications used on your computer. By cleaning this area on a regular basis, the information about your use of your computer is less visible to hackers and others.

My Privacy Tools: This area of Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 contains useful tools that do not fit neatly in other areas. So, this is sort of the left-over miscellaneous area in this utility. It contains four tools that we will explain briefly. These have special purposes and may never be used by you or not regularly used by you. Make sure you understand what they do and do not blindly use them just to try them out.

File Shredder – If you have had some highly confidential files stored on your computer that you now want to permanently remove from your hard drive, you can find these files or folders with this tool and obliterate them from your hard drive. Just be warned, that once you do this, you will not be able to retrieve them again from your hard drive.

Drive Cleanser – You can clean up more than individual files and folders from your hard drive. You can wipe entire partitions or the entire hard drive. This function will write over this space on your hard drive with blanks or zeros, thereby obliterating all of the information that was written to this space earlier. In general, you will probably never use this function unless you are getting rid of your computer’s hard drive and want to permanently wipe any information from that drive before you sell it or give it away. You should not run this function on your active computer as it works very well and will totally wipe all of the hard drive that you specified. This function uses the Acronis Drive Cleanser product which is included in the Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0.

Bootable Media Builder – The Acronis Drive Cleanser product cannot wipe a hard drive that is currently being used. So, you could not run Drive Cleanser to wipe the drive that you are currently running Drive Cleanser on. To totally wipe a computer’s hard drive, you need to run Drive Cleanser from a stand alone bootable CD. This function creates that bootable CD for you. Once you create this bootable CD, you will restart your computer with the bootable CD in your CD drive. Your computer should boot from the CD and then Acronis Drive Cleanser on the CD will be run to wipe your computer’s main hard drive.

Paging File Cleaner – The Windows Paging File (or Swap File) is a file on your hard drive that Windows uses when it runs out of RAM memory to use. When this happens, portions of your RAM memory are saved on the hard drive to free up RAM space for another program to use. If you have a lot of RAM on your computer, then you seldom need to save into the Paging File on your hard drive and information saved there in the past may remain for weeks for a hacker to see. By enabling this function, your Paging File will be cleaned each time you reboot your computer.

That completes the installation, setup, and use of the Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 utility. This is a very powerful tool to protect your computer from Spyware and Hackers. Learn how to use this tool and your system will be a lot safer with it installed and functioning properly.

If you have questions about Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0 or how to use it, please send an email to gene@ugr.com and I will try to assist you. You can also contact the official Acronis Technical Support team by sending a note to support@acronis.com. Enjoy your use of Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 9.0.