Friends computer problem

A friend of mine who was away for a week has reason to believe that there was unauthorized usage of her computer. A complete clean-up of her history had been conducted but not by her and so I wondered:

1. Is there a way to determine what internet activity had taken place once a clean-up program has been used?

2. Are clean-up programs credible?

3. Is there a way to block sites in general, for example porn sites?

Any extra info about this sort of thing would be appreciated.

Not an expert, but I'll take my best shot:

1. Maybe. It depends on what kind of clean-up program was used.
2. They can't erase all traces of data 100%, but they're okay.
3. You can get a filter. Again, it won't work 100% of the time, but it will block a lot.

!. Yes - here a man took his computer in to be cleaned and so on basically the whole works. He deleted everything before taking it in and ran one of these "clean everything even hard drive" type programs. While his computer was going through the "shops" maintence he took it to, the worker happened onto a file with child porn. The worker called the cops and the guy here in this town is sitting at this moment in jail for conversing with a minor with the intent to have sex, rape and sodomy of minors, and that just the beginning since the case is still in the locate all victims stage. No matter what site you go to there is a way to track it, all she has to do is take her computer into a computer repair shop and tell them she has a problem with it and what she may suspect. They will get into the tower and fine the problem and also be able to tell her if someone dumped anything and what was dumped and when since all computer activity logs dates and times.

2. some are and some arento but regardless of which one used the hard drive will still have an "inprint" of on line activity. A police officer who lives a few apppartments down from me explains it this way - "imprints" on a computer is like make a carbon copy of a letter. you can get rid of the original but the carbon copy stays.

3. Yes. its called spam block and pop up block. AOL has them which is one of the reasons I stay with aol.

I have heard of parental controls like a tracing program but I don't know where you can get it or what its call (manufacture and so on) I just know that my local library has them attached to the computers in the childrens resources computers.

something really simple may have happened also...her computer settings may be set to clean history for every day or ever so often

Yeah, the only way to really get rid of every trace of data is by melting down the hard drive or using a very powerful electro-magnet on it...neither is easy, to say the least.

Hey Sabrina...try majorgeeks.com for an undelete program...then pose your questions on the forums there...registration is free and they are major geeks...? Good luck...oh and check their database for a keylogger program...it will keep track of every key stroke made on the keyboard...

Thanks everyone!

It's important to remember this:
As bebop said, most browsers have a setting to retain the history for only a certain length of time. If she was away, this time may have elapsed. It should be possible to check the browser settings to find out how long it is suppsed to retain the history.

Otherwise, without some forensic tools there's prolly not much to be determined at this pont.