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FileKiller is a tiny, portable utility which can securely delete files
I've previously covered Eraser for deleting files securely. Eraser stayed installed on my system for a while, and I must say that, eventually, I found it annoying. It autostarted on boot and despite my attempts to keep it from doing so, it persisted.
Just the other day, I finally uninstalled Eraser -- and today, I found FileKiller. It's a tiny (27KB), open source, portable GUI utility for doing the same thing.
FileKiller is a single window. It doesn't support drag-and-drop and won't add any context menu entries, but it gets the job done. You add files using the Select Files button, and then you click the red-captioned KILL Files on Grid button (way to go on the drama there). The application then BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERS all of those files by overwriting them with random data, blank characters, or specific ASCII characters for however many times you wish (default is five iterations).
I wish I could drag files onto the list or the program's icon (to add them to the list), but besides this minor irritation, FileKiller seems like a low friction way to securely remove unwanted files.
Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsedwardSep 3rd 2010 4:06PM
Why not just use the portable version of eraser?
Matt S.Sep 5th 2010 12:26AM
I never seemed to have a problem getting it to stop opening on startup. Its just an option inside the actual Eraser client..
CMSep 6th 2010 7:59AM
Overwriting with zeros once is all you need.
Has been proven:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/408263ql11460147/
The 'dd' command of any Linux distribution is sufficient.
No need to "brutally slaughter" anything. Save some time for more important things...
CMSep 6th 2010 8:04AM
And to add:
"If a sensitive document has been edited on a PC, overwriting the file is far from sufficient because, during editing, the data have been saved countless times to temporary files, back-ups, shadow copies, swap files ... and who knows where else?"
http://www.h-online.com/newsticker/news/item/Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it-739699.html