How To Permanently Erase Files From Your Computer

You've deleted a file. That's the end of that file. It's gone forever, isn't it?

Well actually, no It's still there.

The problem with computers is that they take short cuts. And one of the things they take a short cut on is that they don't actually delete a file when you click delete. Occasionally, this is useful as it means that if you didn't really want to delete a file, no problem.

But how can you make sure that a deleted file stays completely deleted? Maybe you're passing your old PC onto someone else and you don't want the new owner to have access to all your passwords. Maybe you had some confidential documents from your company and you want to make sure that no-one else gets access to them. Maybe you've deleted some emails that you don't want anyone to be able to read.

No matter the reason, just hitting the delete button isn't good enough.

Unless you are 100% certain that your computer will only ever be used by you and you alone, you need to make sure that the files you want deleted actually get removed totally.

This means that you're going to need some help from a software program. The only other way is to format your hard disk tens of times and hit it with a big hammer until it breaks into so may pieces even the biggest jigsaw addict would give up.

The good news is you can get some cheap software that will give you the same kind of file security the government would expect to use.

It will overwrite the space occupied by the file you want to delete. Not just a few times (that's still too easy to recover) but tens of times. Once it's finished, not even the NSA's high powered computers would be able to read the contents of the file.

Which means if you want to be completely certain that your files are permanently deleted, you need to download this software!