Secure Delete

What is a Secure Delete Utility?

Secure file delete utilities overwrite and permanently delete user-specified files. This means that no one including law enforcement, employers, co-workers, family members, or identity thieves can recover your deleted files.

While you may think hitting the delete button and emptying the Recycle Bin is deleting your selected file, you are wrong. Today’s computer forensic technology allows for the retrieval of deleted files, even if they’ve been emptied out of the Recycle Bin and even from formatted drives. This technology is readily available to the everyday computer user in the form of data recovery software. Anyone with a data recovery software program and a little technical know-how can snoop around your PC and recover deleted files.

To get around this and protect your confidential information, use a secure delete product such as Privacy Controls to permanently delete files.

Are There Risks Involved?

Anytime you permanently delete a file, you face the fact that it is gone for good. Deletion products such as Privacy Controls have safeguards in place to make sure you don’t accidentally delete the wrong files.

These products also usually operate in “Stealth” mode so that no one else is aware that the program is installed. This avoids the risks of unnecessary suspicion on behalf of anyone who might have access to your PC.

Other Reasons to Securely Delete Files

While protecting your confidential files from peering eyes is a necessity, it’s also important to protect them once and for all when you are done with a computer. When computers are recycled or donated, they are no longer in your control. A hard drive with your data could end up in the hands of someone whose intentions are not good. Identity thieves can take your hard drive and find your financial data quickly and easily, even if you erased the data.

By using a permanent deletion utility to securely delete files, it will be impossible for anyone, including identity thieves, law enforcement, and computer forensic specialists to recover your data.

Another reason to use a secure delete utility is to delete temporary files that take up space on your hard drive as well as leave a track of your entire web browsing activity. You’ll gain system performance because your hard drive is cleaner and more efficient. In addition, you’ll gain peace of mind that snoops won’t be able judge you based on the websites you’ve visited. You can zap your temporary files away instantly using a secure file delete utility.

In addition to clearing your web history, you’ll also protect your financial information by cleaning these temporary files. These files can contain information about you including your name, banking information, credit card number, Social Security Number and more depending on what you may have entered while shopping or conducting other business on the internet. Use a permanent tool to delete this data for good.

Even if no one else has access to your PC, you need to delete this data because identities can be stolen in an instant by online intruders. Don’t let these temporary files broadcast your confidential data. Zap them for good.