Office of Information Services

Note: To view PDF files, Adobe Acrobat Reader must be installed in your computer. Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free software and can be downloaded from the Adobe website. Follow the instructions on the Adobe website to download the Reader.

Start/Pause/Stop:  The start button is used to begin a new search process.  By default when Identity  Finder is opened, a search is already started, and this button will be replaced with the pause button.

Navigation:  Once Identity Finder has discovered any files that contain any Social Security information, the three buttons, Collapse All Rows, Previous Match, and Next Match, will help to navigate through the search results.

Secure: The Secure button is used to encrypt a file so that it cannot be read by other users.  After selecting a file, and then clicking on Secure, a Identity Finder will save the file as a .zip file and ask for confirmation.  Identity Finder will also ask how heavy of an encryption you wish to use, and what password you wish to use to gain access to the file.  Make sure that is a password that is easy to remember, since there is no way to reset the password, or to decrypt it once this is done.

Shred: The Shred button is used to delete a file. Once you shred a file, it is not recoverable.  Normally when a file is deleted, all paths to the file are deleted, but it still is on the hard drive, until it is written over by the system.  This button will not only delete the file, but will write over the file seven times using all zeros, so that it is completely wiped from the system.  Make sure that you want to use this option before deleting a file, because once done, there is no way to recover it.  If you think the file might be needed in the future, it’s a good idea to save the file to some other device such as a thumb drive, or CD before shredding the file.

Open:  This button will open the selected file so that you may determine whether to secure, shred, or leave the file as is.