Labs

CyberScrub promises a thorough job of removing evidence. Support for browsers, media players, instant messengers and P2P services is comprehensive. As well as Outlook and Netscape Mail, the program can also clean up e-mail traces of Eudora.

Before you run it, the program lists exactly which files and folders will be removed during cleanup. You can also define a new entry comprising specified files and folders or add them individually.

No less than ten shredding methods are provided, from basic overwriting to the 35-pass Gutmann technique. You can even create your

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own, specifying the number of overwrites and type of data. You can also overwrite 'empty' space on the hard disk to make sure that previously deleted files are really gone.

After running CyberScrub on our test disk, we were surprised to be able to recover all the shredded files. But attempting to open them drew a blank, as the actual data had been overwritten. If the files you're deleting are Word or other documents, you may want to make use of CyberScrub's ability to scramble file names.

You can password-protect the application. Among the browser records that can be deleted is the Favorites list. There's also a button to shred the Recycle Bin.

What's missing is ease of use. To clean up, you have to run the program and click at least three times to choose what to do. There's no instant shortcut, and no auto-clean when leaving your browser. You can schedule CyberScrub to run tasks at predefined intervals in an invisible 'stealth mode', but this means going through the Windows Scheduled Tasks Wizard and setting up strings of parameters.

CyberScrub fulfils its cleanup functions very effectively - it's just a pity it's not easier to use.