A friend showed me how she can recover deleted files on her Mac OS X system using some utility or the other and it got me to thinking… how do I delete files on my own Mac so that she – or anyone else – can’t recover them later?
The Patriot Act requires me asking whether you want to securely delete files to prevent authorized law enforcement officials from their legal investigations?
Just kidding. I don’t really care what you’re deleting. 🙂
Turns out that the Mac OS X system supports a very slick secure delete that can be easily enabled any time you feel like you might have snoops poking around your ex files, whether legitimately or not. Further, you can also just securely delete your trash when you have something particularly sensitive to delete, and otherwise leave it as a standard (e.g. recoverable) deletion.
First off, a secure deletion is one where the file system actually writes garbage over the existing contents of your file as part of teh deletion. Even if you dig around in the file system itself to find where the file was, the data’s gone. A normal deletion, by contrast, simply frees up the pointer to the file contents, while leaving the actual contents untouched until another file overwrites it, which could happen in a few seconds or not for a week.
Let me go backwards and start by showing you how to securely delete what’s currently in your trash. The easiest way is to look at the options on the “Finder” menu:
You can see that right below the usual “Empty Trash…” is “Secure Empty Trash…”. Choose that, and:
Notice the slightly different wording in the warning message. If you really want to delete the trash ‘securely’, go for it.
Another way you can get to this if you don’t remember the menu option is to just click on the trash icon itself in the Dock. It opens and you’ll see something like this:
Click on “Empty Securely” and you’ve removed anything recoverable from your disk.
Finally, you might just want to do what I’ve done: set up your preferences to automatically make every delete a secure one. This can be done by clicking on Preferences… in the Finder, then clicking on the “Advanced” option. Now you’ll see this:
Secure deletion is one of the many ways that the Mac OS X system makes it easy to secure your data in this age of identity theft. Useful indeed.
Thanks for the answer to “how do I delete files permanently?” But, is there a way to “secure delete” one file at a time. I used to have an app called Secure Delete, I think from Allume Spftware. Drop a file on the icon and voila! Can’t find that app now.
Thanks,
Dan
What’s the solution for windows xp in this matter?
Hope you reply.
Thanks.
why do you have to empty trash if you want space on your Flash Drive back?
Very helpful. Long time Mac user but never saw the trash window come up that way – with empty trash button in upper left corner.
That said, I am still unclear whether the “empty securely” button pertains to everything in the trash or just individual files I have highlighted.
Very nice site. Seems like you have a lot of useful information. I’ll be visiting again soon.
I’m still unable to delete files I have downloaded. They are stored in my download file and I cannot figure out how to get rid of these unwanted files. Please help,
Emile
Thanks Master, I’m a newbie your information about How can I securely delete files on my Mac? is very helpful for me.
Best fro you…thank you!!!
Thank for posting this, Dave! Again you have helped me.
– Jack, Sweden
I would invite you to contribute some material to the site, Al, if you’d like to see things presented differently. My key question is always: will this answer the user’s question quickly and efficiently?
As pointed out previously, the Empty button only becomes the Empty Securely when you set that option in the Finder Preferences.
On top of that, there’s no need to double click the trash in the Dock to open the Trash window- a single click works fine.
I have to say that I’m a little disappointed in the quality of this article.
how do I know that my site is activated and when do I get my first cheque can I afford to trust the company I am really confused if so then can u PLs refund my money back to my address
Also, to securely delete files you’ve already deleted, use DiskUtility’s “Erase Free Space” command. This will erase all the leftover bits from old deleted files. I recommend the 7-pass erasing method.
Although you may be able to securely delete files, if you use Time Machine you may have a back up of these files that are easily restored. Does a secure deletion remove it from the Time Machine backup?
The “Empty Securely” button is not there unless you have the “Empty Trash Securely” option selected.
Also, in Terminal, it looks like you can use: “rm -P [Path to file]” to securely delete one file rather than your entire trash.