Spirion (Identity Finder) Instructions

As a Cornell University employee, you are responsible for all institutional data on your computer. You are the custodian of that data.

Due to the risk of data loss/theft and the costs associated with a computer security incident, ILR has established a goal of completely eliminating the storage of reportable university data from its PCs, laptops and servers. Reportable data includes: Social Security, credit card, driver’s license and bank account numbers of our students, alumni, faculty, staff, customers and affiliates.

The Identity Finder scan/cleanup procedure should be done at least semi-annually by everyone, monthly if you work with confidential data occasionally and weekly if you work with confidential data on a regular basis. If a data loss incident occurs, you and your department will be responsible for assisting with identifying and communicating to all affected parties. The potential cost and time impact to you and the school in dealing with an incident far outweighs the impact of eliminating the reportable data.

Cornell University purchased Identity Finder (IDF) to aid in the detection and elimination of this data. It is licensed to run on any Cornell owned device. All managed computers connected to the ILR networks have Identity Finder installed and configured automatically. For Cornell owned, ILR supported home machines download IDF , install it and run the scan.

Our Identity Finder Quick Start Guide (PDF, 189 KB) provides brief instructions for scanning and cleaning your computers with IDF. We also compiled an Identity Finder Tips and Tricks (PDF, 574 KB) document. In addition, IDF has an extensive built-in help system that is accessible by pressing the F1 key. If you have additional questions, please submit a service request.

What if I cannot remember my password?

The Identity Finder client application provides the ability to save settings, configuration information, and sensitive data across sessions through the use of a profile password. It is not possible to recover a lost password; however, it is possible to delete a profile and create a new one. When the profile password is created, that password is used to encrypt the profile. The profile password is not stored anywhere and therefore if it is lost or forgotten, then all of the information in the profile will be lost.

NOTE: The following data will be lost when deleting a profile:

  • Custom Folders, Remote Computers and authentication credentials
  • OnlyFind Identities
  • Ignore list entries
  • Password Vault entries
  • Database connection information
  • Websites list

How to delete your Identity Finder profile

  1. Close Identity Finder if it is open
  2. Click Start, and paste the following location into the search bar and press Enter:
    %localappdata%/identity finder/
  3. Windows Explorer will open and display your Identity Finder profile files.  Delete the following files:
    • identityinfo.dat
    • indentityinfo.sqlite
  5. Open Identity Finder and type a new password