E-MAIL messages, Excel spreadsheets and customer databases are featuring increasingly in cases of fraud, defamation and information theft, which gives wrong-doers more reason than ever to tamper with these electronic pieces of evidence.

How well they do it could make a difference between being caught and getting away with their misdeeds.

The taxman here, for instance, is finding that nine in 10 tax evasion cases involve the use of computers.

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Digital trail gone in 20 seconds

IT IS already possible to build computers that leave no digital trails.

Such computers boot up using CDs and run on RAM memory, which does away with permanent data storage devices such as hard disks. Data is stored in portable flash-memory drives that can store up to 5GB of data.

If the authorities mount a surprise raid, all the user has to do is unplug the power cable and swallow - yes, swallow - the portable drive, only the length of a thumb and a few millimetres thick.

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