Granny_v

Q: secure empty trash in El Capitan?

The 'Secure empty trash' option seems to have disappeared since upgrading.  Has anybody else had this problem?

intel iMac

Posted on Oct 3, 2015 3:01 AM

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Q: secure empty trash in El Capitan?

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  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Feb 7, 2016 6:23 PM in response to etbarron
    Level 9 (50,379 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 7, 2016 6:23 PM in response to etbarron

    They desperately need to improve their Beta testing and QA policies and procedures for iOS and OSX  releases.

    The removal of secure empty trash is neither a testing failure or some mythical "improvement" item. It fully functioned in the betas. They removed it in the final release because it is not actually secure.

    The function did not and never has been reliable. Apple cannot guarantee that your information cannot be recovered if you use any of the available "secure" erase schemes known to mankind. Many of them will make it tremendously difficult, but they will not absolutely make your data inaccessible.

    If you are worried about your data then encrypt your disk. That is much more secure than secure erase because the OS has no idea where the drive controller decides to move inaccessible files. If the whole disk is encrypted, it doesn't matter if a block is bad and cannot be overwritten once or a million times.

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