Question

Is there a value to a potential suspect using an obscure or unknown operating system? Similarly, is there value in using data hiding techniques like log removal, private browsing, clearing Web caches, etc? What is the value, if any? If there isn't value, why not?

Answer 1

If the potential suspect is careful enough, he can use any OS, and he will be undetected. As long as he is not accused, the state of the operating system does not influence his being identified. However, once under the radar, given ideal computational power and skills, every system can be broken down by identifying loopholes, albeit the time required may increase owing to the unfamiliarity of the system. This is true for the victims also. The unfamiliarity of the OS does increase complexity for the concerned party but does not make it an impossible detection task.

There is little value in clearing Web Caches and log removal etc., as most "data hiding" by simply performing a cleanup of residual temp files, cache folders and logs just hide them from your eyes but do not delete them entirely. Even though the folder is gone from the direct view of unwanted people, but the documents still exist and can easily be found with a bit of extra effort. Your browsing history is made up of various items, such as site URLs, cookies, cache files, download lists, search history and so on. The type of files we need to focus on now is the cache files, because they are easy to recover and once recovered, they can reveal unauthorized parties basically everything about your Internet activities. Now, cache actually speeds up your browsing, but clearing it may solve other issues of web sites not loading properly. In principle, deleting anything in an OS, for example, MS Windows does nothing but remove its reference from the directories, and the actual info is still there, disguised as "free space" to be overwritten by new files. Shredding the files may solve this problem, but is not usually performed by every user and may require special software.