REMOVE EVEN MORE JUNK FROM YOUR PC
Schedule clean-ups for convenient times
Both Privacy Eraser and PrivaZer let you schedule clean-ups – using settings you specify – to take place at a frequency and time that’s convenient for you, such as when you’re not using your PC.
In Privacy Eraser, click the Settings button in the top-right corner, choose Schedule (see screenshot right) and tick the ‘Schedule options’ box. Select how frequently you want Privacy Eraser to delete private data from your PC – weekly or monthly should suffice – then specify when to perform the clean-up and click Apply.
In PrivaZer, click Scheduled on the home screen then use the dropdown menus to specify the frequency, day and time of the clean-up. Select which drive(s) to clean, click Setup to choose the private data you want to wipe, then click OK to confirm. You can create several scheduled tasks to perform different clean-ups for drives at specific times.
Shut down your PC after cleaning
Full clean-ups in both programs sometimes take longer than an hour, which means you need to wait around to turn off your PC afterwards. To save yourself time and electricity, you can have either tool shut down your system automatically once it’s finished cleaning.
To do this in Privacy Eraser, either click the down arrow next to Quick Clean after performing a scan and choose ‘Clean & Shut down’, or click that button on its home screen. You can also click ‘Clean & Restart’ to delete files that require you to reboot your PC to fully remove them.
In PrivaZer, click ‘Shut down PC after cleaning’ (see screenshot below left) in the bottom-left corner of a Scan screen to select that option in the menu that opens. Additional options include ‘Restart PC after cleaning’, ‘PC in sleep mode after cleaning’ and – new in the latest version – ‘Play a song when completed’.
Perform automatic data clean-ups
To ensure that private data never remains on your PC for longer than it needs to do, you can set your privacy cleaner to delete it automatically. As mentioned opposite, PrivaZer only offers this option in its paid-for Donors version, but Privacy Eraser provides it for free.
Click ‘Monitoring’ in the program’s Settings and select System Monitoring. Tick the ‘Browser monitoring’ box to erase details of your internet activities each time you close your browser. Select the browser you want to clean and choose an action from the dropdown menu, such as ‘Automatically clean with notification’ (see screenshot above). Tick the ‘System monitoring’ box to clean your PC using your default settings when private data is consuming a specific amount of disk space.
Add cleaning options to your right-click menu
Rather than open Privacy Eraser or PrivaZer every time you want to erase private data from a drive or folder, you can add their cleaning options to your right-click menu. Open the Settings page in the first tool and click General, then tick the box ‘Add “Secure Erase with Privacy Eraser” option to Windows Explorer context menu’. You can also add the option to the right-click menu for your recycle bin.
In PrivaZer, choose ‘Advanced options’ on the home screen and click the General tab. In the ‘Installation of contextual menus’ section, select ‘For drives, storages’, ‘For files’ and ‘For directories’ to add a ‘Delete without a trace’ option to the right-click menus of drives, files and folders. You can also add an ‘Empty without a trace’ option to your recycle bin’s right-click menu.