I accidentally formatted my external HDD. Used several recovery programs and when it was recovered, I found many files that I have never stored them on that HDD, such as thumbnails of the images and webpages I have visited on my Mac. Does it mean that I'm under surveillance?
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Have you backed up your computer to this external drive before? – Dan Getz Aug 29 '16 at 14:49
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1Why do you believe that this indicates surveillance? – schroeder Aug 29 '16 at 15:17
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@DanGetz No , never. – Aug 30 '16 at 20:30
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@schroeder I can't say why , but I have a good reason to believe so. – Aug 30 '16 at 20:30
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No, it does not mean you are under surveillance.
There are loads of reasons why thumbnails of webpages you visited would be on your hard drive. The browser might cache them, e.g. for using on the "frequently visited" page. The OS might create thumbnails of images in your temporary internet files, for quick viewing in file explorers. There are loads of temporary files on your hard drive that various programs and the OS creates for different reasons. When you run a file recovery program, you recover these files together with your ordinary documents.
So why did the files end up on your external drive, and not your main one? That is admittably a bit weird. The obvious explanation is a backup, but you say you never did one. Maybe some kind of sync function that was automatically turned on or that you forgot about using? Maybe some program using a temp folder on the wrong drive?
But more importantly, if you were under surveilence, the malware would most likely not produce files like that. Taking screenshots and storing them on the hard drive seems like a very impractical way of performing surveilence.
So, while I can not tell for sure why the files were there, I think just assuming surveillance here fails Occam's razor. Sure, I can not prove that you are not under surveillance - maybe you are - but the discovery of those files alone would not lead me to believe so.
Anders
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And file recovery programs often cannot reproduce the original file name, and use a counter instead. That might have played a role as well – Yorick de Wid Aug 29 '16 at 14:58
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Your answer sounds as if you're talking about the main hard drive, instead of the external hard drive in the question. Could you clarify which one you mean by the phrase "your hard drive"? – Dan Getz Aug 30 '16 at 20:32
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Thanks . I'm aware of those reasons , but what made me ask this question was that I found them on an external drive that I have never stored such things on it and that I have even found some stuff from 10 years ago (years before I bought the external drive and my Mac) and I'm pretty sure they should have been destroyed by now. – Aug 30 '16 at 20:35
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@AQuestion To be honest, I missed that bart of your question. My bad. I don't have a definitive explanation for why the files ended up on your external drive, but I would still say that a "natural" explanation is way more likely than surveillance here. Will update my answer. – Anders Aug 31 '16 at 07:17
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@Anders What if the contents of my Mac are encrypted using FileVault ? And that it is almost always not connected to the internet. Would assuming surveillance fail Occam's razor again? Thanks again. – Aug 31 '16 at 13:45