Concerned about your privacy? Want to cover your tracks and securely delete sensitive data from your PC? PC Tools’ Privacy Guardian™ (free eval, $29.95 to register) may be just the ticket. Compatible with all versions of Windows from 95 through XP, this safe, easy-to-use tool is perfect for the average user who wants a clean machine but doesn’t want to be concerned with how it gets that way. It’s also ideal for cleaning up a hard drive before you donate the PC to charity or pass it on to a friend or family member.

Privacy Guardian locates and disposes of junk that accumulates in temporary files, document & run histories, the clipboard, and the recycle bin. It scours all the Microsoft Office applications and sanitizes temporary Internet files in Internet Explorer, Mozilla/Firefox, Netscape, and Opera. It even scrubs the index.dat file and polishes the registry. But wait, it’s not finished yet–it also scans an extensive list of 48 popular applications, including AOL, Acrobat Reader, Kazaa, and ICQ, and incinerates any trash it finds. It adds the option Shred contents with Privacy Guardian to your recycle bin.

Installation is straightforward and the user interface is easy to understand. I ran the program with everything except Bleach Free Space selected and it took only a couple of minutes on a slow (400 MHz) Win98 SE test box, reporting that it cleaned 518 items. The report doesn’t specify what was cleaned and there is no log file generated–a feature I would like to see in future versions.

The powerful file shredder built into Privacy Guardian–which also functions as a stand-alone application–uses US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M, which means that you won’t be able to recover the data it shreds. I tried it out on a test file then attempted to recover the file using uneraser; it found no trace of the shredded file. The Bleach Free Space option uses the shredder to completely sanitize the free space on your hard drive, removing all traces of old data.

I have one complaint: the help file is sparse. For instance, the option Globally clean Internet Explorer tracks is not explained, and I don’t like selecting options if I don’t know what they do. On the other hand, I do like software that does what it promises to do without a lot of input; this one appears to do that, making it an excellent choice for the less-than-technically-savvy user.