TechTips - Find and Hide Your Virtual Tracks with Identity Finder Free Edition

Identity theft is one of the biggest problems that users of credit cards, online merchants, and various other digital forms of payment or identification face and fear. Your computer can be loaded with all sorts of Personal information that you aren't even aware of. It can be stored in old emails, documents, searches, or even within a web browser. This is the information that hackers come looking for, and most people done realize how much of a residual footprint they can leave on their computer without knowing it's there. In this guide we will use a free tool called Identity Finder to track down all the personal information on our computers and make sure it is removed forever, this should help prevent identity theft.

Well now you can use Identity Finder Free Edition to hopefully track down some of that personal information and get it off your computer forever!

Identity Finder is a program that finds and protects sensitive data that is left on your computer; the program simply looks at patterns consistent with SSN, credit card numbers, birth dates, and various other personal information. It then tells you where on your machine it's located so you can remove it, before someone else finds it.

There are several different versions of the Identity Finder program but for this guide we will use the Free Edition that should be sufficient for most home users. The difference in the programs (Free, Home, and Enterprise) is simply the power it gives you to perform more in-depth searches and find the info easier. However if you want to unlock the powerful searches you will have to purchase a license for the other versions (home - $20 and enterprise - $30).

The free version gives you the ability to find the most common types of Personal info that probably is on your machine, credit card numbers and passwords. For this guide we will run the free version so get it HERE.

Once downloaded just double click the installer file and let's get started.

The wizard will open - click Next

Accept the agreement - Click Next

Choose your setup type (I chose anyone who uses this computer and Typical) - Click typical or custom

Click Install

Once Identity Finder is installed it will ask if you want to launch the program, leave this checked and click Finish (this will open the program)

Now you will have a window with three buttons, Activate, Launch Free, and Exit. We want to click the Launch Free button. The program then will ask you why you are using the program and warn you that it's only meant for home use, it's not legal to use it for commercial purposes, click Home user and click OK. You will then be asked if you want to go through all of these prompts again when you launch the program or opt out, I chose to skip them from now on, so click the check box next to "always perform my selection" and click yes.

Skip the registration unless you really want to fill out the pointless form. Uncheck the box about anonymously participating in the customer experience program and click OK. You will then be prompted to create a password for using Identity Finder, this is optional, either enter one and click Next or click Skip.

Now finally we are ready to run a search to see what kind of Personal information is on our PC. For the free version nearly all the options are locked so you can't edit the search features, but if you want to see the other options that are offered in the Home and Enterprise editions you can click on the "Continue Wizard Search" and "Open Advanced Interface" buttons, they will show you the other options you can search for with the more advanced versions of Identity Finder.

So for our search (which will be limited to Credit Card numbers and passwords) we simply need to do the following:

Click Start Search

Leave the options checked (In better versions you can choose more options here)

Click Next

Leave the options checked (In better versions you can choose more options here)

Click Next

Review the search info

Click Finish

Identity Finder should search through your computers most common locations for Credit Card numbers and Passwords, as it finds them it will populate in the preview window. It will also give you the location of the file so you can find them and get them off your computer.