Secure Empty Trash missing on El Capitan

"It is not a 'bug'. It is a feature. Hence it is here to stay like other features."

LOL! Gotta love *those* kind of "features"! ;-)

What good is it to have something like Secure Empty Trash when it is not capable of doing an empty of trash that is truly secure?

I am actually glad to see Apple admit the truth of about the weakness of Secure Empty Trash. Maybe the removal of this will prevent a false sense of security on the part of some users which would be a good thing.

infinityBBC wrote:

The "solved" link does not seem to be working.

It isn't working because the feature it described, securely emptying trash, was removed from El Capitan, & Apple finally got around to removing the article. This is not the first time that has been explained in this discussion.

Ah ha — found a way! Open the Trash, then select the desired file(s) to delete, right click on one of these files, then select "Delete Immediately". Not as quick as the "Secure Empty Trash" method, but at least it works.

Like "Secure Empty Trash," the "Delete Immediately" command was never intended as a way to get rid of files that some app (most often Preview) thinks is still open & in use. While using it for that purpose usually has no undesired side effects, that may not always be true, so it is much safer to quit the app has not correctly updated the file's 'in use' status, which should allow you to empty the trash normally.

This insures that all the 'housekeeping' chores done when closing a file are done properly & avoids the file system problems that can sometimes occur when files are not properly closed.

R C-R wrote:

infinityBBC wrote:

Ah ha — found a way! Open the Trash, then select the desired file(s) to delete, right click on one of these files, then select "Delete Immediately". Not as quick as the "Secure Empty Trash" method, but at least it works.

Like "Secure Empty Trash," the "Delete Immediately" command was never intended as a way to get rid of files that some app (most often Preview) thinks is still open & in use. While using it for that purpose usually has no undesired side effects, that may not always be true, so it is much safer to quit the app has not correctly updated the file's 'in use' status, which should allow you to empty the trash normally.

This insures that all the 'housekeeping' chores done when closing a file are done properly & avoids the file system problems that can sometimes occur when files are not properly closed.

Actually it is possible there is a side-effect.

If the file is still open, then the file system will not actually delete it, it will just remove the filename from the directory, and keep the storage around until the last close on the file happens.

If your Mac should crash, or you force power it off, then the file storage is not deleted.

The next fsck (File System ChecK) may detect the undeleted file and put it in the lost+found directory with a numeric name. You then get to try and figure out if this was something important or not.

As long as the file is still open, the storage still exists. So if someone is doing this to get free space back, it will not happen.

BobHarris wrote:

R C-R wrote:

... While using it for that purpose usually has no undesired side effects, that may not always be true ...

Actually it is possible there is a side-effect.

I agree. That's why I italicized the word "usually" & added the "may not always be true" qualifier in my reply. 😉

My DeWalt works wonders on hard drives.. 😉

I think you mean

srm --help

I got on chat support with Apple and their only answer to the missing "Secure Empty Trash" function in El Capitan was "well, things come and things go. That one went."

Did a little digging on my own and discovered the menu you get when you "Control-click" on an item, which if you scroll all the way down to "Services", the second item in that menu is "Secure Delete". Seems to work like a charm on individual or multiple-selected files and folders without even having to drag them to the trash first.

Hope that helps your situation.

Great discussion! After reading pages and pages on this forum topic, I'm still left with uncertainty about what to do to feel reasonably confident about selling my Macbook Air on eBay or Craigslist for example. Most likely, I would simply use the one tool Apple provides -- Disk Utility's "Erase" function to wipe the SSD with a "single pass of zeros over the entire disk". What are the chances that some average Joe out there is going to buy it and then use a file recovery app to scan it for file fragments to see if they find an interesting files OR acquire my login credentials to my bank account? My assumption is that this possibility is so low it is not worth fretting about. But, what do you guys think about that?

Yes, it isn't much of a chance; however, personally, I feel a 10% chance is too much; considering the criminals' investment in trying to get people's information from anywhere online including hacking into encrypted government servers, my hard drive would probably be a piece of cake. Remember, that is my personal opinion, but then my privacy is very important to me.

AMCarter3 wrote:

Great discussion! After reading pages and pages on this forum topic, I'm still left with uncertainty about what to do to feel reasonably confident about selling my Macbook Air on eBay or Craigslist for example. Most likely, I would simply use the one tool Apple provides -- Disk Utility's "Erase" function to wipe the SSD with a "single pass of zeros over the entire disk". What are the chances that some average Joe out there is going to buy it and then use a file recovery app to scan it for file fragments to see if they find an interesting files OR acquire my login credentials to my bank account? My assumption is that this possibility is so low it is not worth fretting about. But, what do you guys think about that?

Encrypt the SSD using FileVault. That will put what appears to be random bits on the drive

Reformat as unencrypted. That will throw away the encryption key so the random bits cannot be decrypted anymore.

Repeat. This will make sure that the "over provisioned" sectors in an SSD get into the mix.

After the 2nd reformat unencrypted, install a clean version of OS X (which should actually be the version your Mac was shipped with).

At worse some retired SSD blocks may have salvageable data, but hopefully you do not have anything really that interesting to dig that deeply to get.

Now if you had been using FileVault from the beginning, you just have to reformat unencrypted, and install a clean OS X.

Bob,

The first and only time I ever attempted to encrypt my hard drive with Filevault (on a 2013 Macbook Pro), the process stalled and turned into a disaster. The encryption dragged on for days with a prediction that it was going to take something like 80 days to complete. After hours of calls with an Applecare Sr. Advisor, we concluded the hard drive had likely failed in the process. That turned out to be true. After installing a new SSD, I never attempted Filevault again.

My need for security is not as high as some people have expressed on this Forum. However, I am interested in Filevault given the positive comments from folks like you that I respect. (I've seen you comments on other Apple forum topics for years and you helped me once on some issue). I really don't have any practical knowledge of the Filevault installation process or the extent to which today's version gets in your way or slows things down. Is it really as transparent to the user as some have described on this forum? Does it simply boil down to installing it and using a more robust password for logging in?

Mac

AMCarter3 wrote:

...

My need for security is not as high as some people have expressed on this Forum. However, I am interested in Filevault .... I really don't have any practical knowledge of the Filevault installation process or the extent to which today's version gets in your way or slows things down. Is it really as transparent to the user as some have described on this forum? Does it simply boil down to installing it and using a more robust password for logging in?

Nothing to install.

System Preferences -> Security -> FileVault and enable it.

NOTE: Make sure you save the aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeee-ffff key that gets generated in a safe place (I use a password vault with a very long password that is itself encrypted and replicated to other systems).

When you boot, you will be prompted for your password before it will finish the boot so it can unlock the drive and access the operating system.

After that I do not notice it. And if you have a Mac with an i5, i7 or similar CPU (which is like most the last 5 years), chances are you have hardware support for the encryption/decryption, so that FileVault overhead becomes noise.

And bottom line, you do not need to worry about selling your Mac with its SSD, because once you reformat it and destroy the aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeee-ffff key, it will be very expensive (big government budget level expensive) to get to your old data on the SSD (and even then they may not succeed).

Do not think of it so much as "security" as dealing with SSD and modern hard disk hidden behaviors in such as way that a sold, lost, or stolen Mac will not give someone access to your data. Data that while not super sensitive, may be the kind that might let them access your financial empire, or affect your family if used incorrectly.

Thanks very much for that, Bob! Very clear, helpful and reassuring guidance. Since we have recent model Macbook Air's, I plan to now setup Filevault.

Cheers,

Mac

"Who" is "John Galt?"

Cool.....