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It's hard to know how to respond to this problem. In practice, there may be dozens of programs that behave like this. LibreOffice may keep as many records as Microsoft Office, and a user's shell history file may contain commands that include the file's name, even though the file has been securely deleted.

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On Windows or macOS, Microsoft Office may retain a reference to the name of a file in the вЂњRecent DocumentsвЂќ menu, even if the file has been deleted (Office might sometimes even keep temporary files containing the contents of the file). There are many ways in which this could occur, but two examples should suffice to convey the possibility. Even if you follow the advice above and youвЂ™ve deleted all copies of a file, there is a chance that certain traces of deleted files may persist on your computer, not because the files themselves haven't been properly deleted, but because some part of the operating system or some other program keeps a deliberate record of them. Unfortunately, thereвЂ™s also another limitation to secure deletion tools. via Dropbox or some other file-sharing service) thereвЂ™s usually no way to guarantee that it will be deleted forever. Additionally, once a file is stored in the cloud (e.g.

In order to securely delete a file, you must delete every copy of that file, everywhere it was stored or sent. None of the tools above will delete backups that were made to somewhere else on your computer, another disk or USB drive, a вЂњTime Machine,вЂќ on an email server, in the cloud, or sent to your contacts. Remember that the advice above only deletes files on the disk of the computer youвЂ™re using. A Warning About the Limitations of Secure Deletion Tools Anchor link This command overwrites the file contents several times. In the latest versions of macOS, you can use rm -P to overwrite the file. Srm was removed in OS X 10.12, but it is still possible to install. Fuller instructions (in English) are available here. If you use a traditional hard drive with OS X 10.11, and are comfortable with the command line, you can use the Mac's srm command to overwrite the file. The Secure Empty Trash feature was removed in OS X 10.11 because Apple felt that it could not guarantee secure deletion on the fast flash (SSD) drives that most of its modern models now use. On OS X 10.4 to 10.10, you can securely delete files by moving them to the Trash and then selecting Finder > Secure Empty Trash.

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Your operating system probably already has software that can do this for you-software that can overwrite all of the вЂњemptyвЂќ space on your disk with gibberish and thereby protect the confidentiality of deleted data. This makes it difficult to retrieve what used to be written there. So, whatвЂ™s the best way to delete a file forever? Ensure it gets overwritten immediately. And with a little work and the right tools (such as вЂњundeleteвЂќ software or forensic methods), that вЂњdeletedвЂќ file can be retrieved. Until this happens, that вЂњdeletedвЂќ file is still on your disk itвЂ™s just invisible to normal operations. Therefore, it may be weeks, months, or even years before that file is overwritten. (You can read more about why this causes problems for secure deletion here.) If youвЂ™re using an SSD or a USB flash drive, you can jump to the section below.Дid you know that when you move a file on your computer into your computer's trash folder and empty the trash, the file is not completely erased? Computers normally don't вЂњdeleteвЂќ files when you move a file to the trash, your computer just makes the file invisible and allows the space it took up to be overwritten by something else sometime in the future. Secure deletion on SSDs, USB flash drives, and SD cards is very hard! This is because these types of drives use a technique called wear leveling and do not provide low-level access to the bits as stored on the drive. These instructions apply only to traditional disk drives, and not to Solid State Drives (SSDs), which are standard in modern computers, USB keys/USB thumb drives, or SD cards/flash memory cards. The instructions below should only be used for securely deleting data from spinning drives.

More information is available on encrypting with FileVault 2.

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If you encrypt your entire drive, you donвЂ™t have to worry much about doing secure deletion since the master encryption key is protected with a password that you control, and that you can change or erase to make data on the drive irretrievable. We highly recommend you take this step to protect your data. Note: Modern versions of macOS will prompt you to use FileVault 2 to encrypt your entire drive.