Do Not Allow Tech Criminals To Misuse Your Data, Shed It Now On Mac OS X

Criminal activities in the cyber world generally involve people who have hit the pinnacle in the world of technology. When it comes to technical criminals, you, as a computer user, form an intention to be aware and careful so that you could give your best to go a few steps ahead of them. Unfortunately, this is not enough to keep you all safe. However, it is simple for you to protect your crucial information stored on your computer and easy to secure yourself against strategies implemented for information theft.

It is also not wrong if you are thinking that why people become victim of criminals if all this is so easy. Do you think that users do not put efforts to save their data? Of course they do, but something done ordinarily does not really make difference. Antivirus software, Firewalls, and other security applications are commonly used to bring a good level of security to computers.

Let’s consider a scenario that demonstrates the story of thousands of computer users:

“Everything was so cool while my Mac hard disk worked fine. However, it suddenly started creating issues and I was scared of loss of huge information that was stored on it. Well, there was nothing to do except getting a replacement drive. I ordered one, got it in next few days, installed it on iMac, and restored Mac OS X from time machine backup. It feels relaxed that I am back to my work.”

It is not as wondering as everyone tends to do the exact thing without a fair knowledge about what next they are going to face with the hard disk they replaced. What would you choose to do? Make it a waste material or give it to a kid to play? It is not at all sensible to think like that as you have made the disk an information hub for years. Who knows that the disk you have taken for granted and thrown might go into wrong hands, someone who has squeezed the technical field to have a top-notch knowledge. Those who are involved in criminal activities do such practices.

Being a Mac OS X user, you might think that once files are deleted, nobody can catch them. Wrong! It is an unexpectedly easy task for a tech-savvy criminal to extract your data from the files that have been thrown away. Thankfully, Mac OS X allows you to shred these files to prevent a spy from having possession of your data. You may choose to use Mac OS X and its Secure File Erase for shredding the data. This is where you get the answer to your question ‘why to shred files and documents on Mac OS X?’

There is nothing to think over it much. You can easily remove files from hard disk permanently and safely. The time taken during the process all depends on the security level you adopt to delete the data. Mac OS X offers an option ‘Empty Trash Securely’ that makes it all easy to securely erase the Trash files, however, the process takes a bit longer to complete. The options turn out to be much effective to shred the files that you remove from your hard drive.

You can perform a secure file deletion on Mac OS X by running Disk Utility from ‘~/Applications/Utilities’ folder. Perform the following:

• Open Disk Utility.
• Select the hard disk and switch to the ‘Erase‘ tab.
• Click ‘Erase Free Space‘.
• Select a method that you want to choose for secure erase.
• Click ‘Erase Free Space‘. It will keep you waiting for some time.

After you have removed free space securely, use ‘Empty Trash Securely’ in Finder. Do the following:

• Open Finder window.
• In the menu, click ‘Finder‘.
• Click ‘Preferences‘ and select ‘Advanced‘.
• Select the checkbox next to “Empty Trash securely“

You are now done with removing all the files permanently from your Mac OS X. Keep doing search to leave the criminals behind and protect your data from being misused.

Author Opinion: Tom contributes this post. Though Mac has own ability to secure wipe files, still it is preferred to select a professional file eraser Mac software that wipes the Macintosh HD with several passes and by International Wiping algorithms.