One of the things that many people believe about their computer system is that pressing the word, “delete” really does delete the information off the computer. It is gone. You may believe this simply because you have been faced with the lost document or the long winded email you typed up is now gone. While those types of documents may in fact be gone for good, the ability to delete information from a computer takes more than just a hit of the delete key. In many cases, the information may stay on your computer for a long time.
This is important information to know. After all, if you do not have the ability to delete information off your computer, you could be exposing that information to numerous other people. Just consider the amount of stuff you store on your computer. You likely do your personal banking online. You may store your family’s photos on your computer. You may have medical files documenting your latest health scare on the computer, too. It may seem like all you have to do is delete this information to make it gone forever, that simply is not true.
It is actually quite difficult to permanently remove data from a computer. If you want do remove that data for good, you may have to actually destroy the hard drive to make it happen. That is not something you want to do.
When you delete something on the computer, the only thing the computer does to that information is to place a mark on the file indicating that the file can be overwritten. If the operating system needs to do so, it will overwrite that section of the hard drive.
If you are concerned about the information on your computer, the only real way to be sure that the information is completely gone is to destroy the hard drive. While it may not be easily accessible when you delete it, it is there.