Basically what happens is that the file is marked as free space and remains on your disk. You might not be able to see it anymore but anybody with the right tools can snap up data you thought was permanently destroyed. Just look in the back of any computer magazine and you ll find tons of ads for data recovery services whose main job is to retrieve lost data. It doesn t even have to be a professional service to get your data either, as was clear with yesterday s pick, a small utility program like Network Undelete can drag up all sorts of stuff. What Shredder does is totally obliterate a file and makes it impossible to recover by any means.
Shredder starts by overwriting every bit of data in the file then randomizing the results.
Next it overwrites the name, date, time, and size so that the file is now totally untraceable. In other words, kiss that sucker goodbye. Well maybe you ve got an overly annoying systems administrator at work that likes to snoop around your computer. Probably wouldn t be a good thing if he found deleted material that shall we say didn t quite comply with the proper computer use directives of management. Or what about at home, if you ve got Norton Utilities installed there s an undelete utility included in that just waiting to dig up dirt.