You save the file manually so, in theory, the autorecovery file is now gone. Let's say you have just successfully recovered a corrupted file in MS Office after an application crash.

While this sounds very reassuring, a little experiment can reveal a severe privacy threat 'deleted' auto-recovery files pose. If you read the support documentation on the official MS Office and OpenOffice sites, the companies claim that auto-recovery copies are deleted as soon as the file is manually saved, or you quit the editor.

The afterlife of your deleted auto-recovery files While this handy feature can save you from the hassle of having to redo hours of work, or losing critical data, it's worth getting familiar with its working mechanism from a privacy point of view. By default, the apps save copies of docs you are working on to your computer's hard drive in every 10-15 minutes so that your unsaved edits can be rescued if there is a system crash, power failure, or an application crash. However, the working mechanisms of these applications may pose just as much privacy threats to your files as evil-minded cyber-crooks operating from Russia, or China do.Ĭase in point, the auto-recovery feature in MS Office and OpenOffice. When you think of threats that may compromise your encrypted personal, or business files, the last thing that comes to mind is the popular document editors you regularly handle your docs with.

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