As a child I was always amazed at my mother's uncanny ability to know that I was trying to hide something.
No matter how well I hid the evidence of my misdeeds, my mother always knew something was out of place and would fix me with the stare that had me spilling the truth.
A couple of decades later I realise not much has changed.
No matter how much we think we can hide our sins, the truth in the technology age is that there are no secrets. None.
Leaving a trail
No matter how much we think we can hide our sins, the truth in the technology age is that there are no secrets.
Kimberly Guest, senior journalist, ITWeb
Yesterday's ITWeb story about edits to Wikipedia is a case in point.
Behind this sorry tale is probably a devoted government - or party - employee trying to remove what he or she believes to be unnecessarily critical commentary on the country's policy and leadership.
While the person was no doubt well-intentioned, the site of the action - a government network - is certain to create added negative attention for government.
Finding the evidence and source of the Wikipedia edits was not particularly difficult for ITWeb journalist Paul Furber. In fact, today's average teen could probably have done it, given the desire to do so.
Another colleague, Leon Engelbrecht, pointed out that installing Google Desktop onto your device of choice can render all kinds of information you may have thought were long deleted and forgotten.
Printing a document, without saving said document, is also no guarantee of removing the trail. This is because the printer in question will have a copy saved to its memory.
Blessing or curse?
The Concise Oxford Dictionary (seventh edition) defines the word 'delete' as "make no longer effective by crossing out or obliterating or removing". Based on this definition, I can't help but wonder if this word still has a place in our vocabulary.
Forensic IT specialists will tell you that wherever technology is involved, you can be 99.9% certain the actions taken are recorded somewhere. Deleting said records only results in the evidence not being immediately apparent.
I would go so far to suggest IT vendors - both hardware and software - could be setting themselves up for a damages claim just through the provision of a 'delete' function. Perhaps not locally, but certainly in the highly-litigious US.
All the same, I personally am pleased the technology era leaves so many trails. I sometimes worry I may not have my mother's nose for misdeeds and so I welcome any source that will help me to keep my own kids in line.
In the meantime - and in order to avoid the expense of forensic consulting - I'm practising that stare my mother uses so well to get me to spill the beans. My children are still young, after all.
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