How To Permanently Erase Files From Your Computer

OK, you've highlighted a file and pressed "delete". That's the end of that file. It's gone forever, isn't it?

Well actually, no It's still on your hard drive.

The problem with computers is that they take short cuts. And one of the things they take a short cut on is by ignoring your command to delete a file. It doesn't really get deleted. Occasionally, this is useful because it means you can undelete a file that you've accidentally deleted.

But how can you make sure that a deleted file stays completely deleted? Maybe you're selling your computer and you'd rather the new owner had no chance of finding out all of your passwords and logins. Maybe you had a number of confidential files from work and you need to make sure that they're not kept on your hard disk any longer than needed. Maybe you've deleted some emails that you don't want anyone to be able to read.

Whatever the reason, just hitting the delete button isn't good enough.

Unless you can guarantee that no-one else will ever have access to your computer, you need to make sure that the files you want deleted actually get removed totally.

Far and away the best way to do this is by using a software program. The only other way is to format your hard disk tens of times and then splinter it into thousands of little pieces, there's no way you can do this on your own.

The good news is you can download some affordable software that makes securely deleting files an absolute breeze.

It will overwrite the space occupied by the file you want to delete. Not just a couple times (that wouldn't be foolproof) but time after time after time. When that's completed, 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 should download this inexpensive software!