“WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T SECURE EMPTY MY TRASH?!?!?!” You may have screamed at your Mac at some point in the last year or two. Wondering if your hard drive was trustworthy. If it was keeping you safe. Or if was spilling your data all over town. Telling all of your secrets and lies to all of your worst enemies. 

As you may have noticed, with the OS upgrades over the past couple of years Apple no longer provides a “Secure Empty Trash” feature. This is both a good and a bad thing. Mostly good. A little annoying.

To start, this is a bad thing. It means by default your data cannot be deleted safely. It means that if you need to delete sensitive data (that’s not already encrypted), you’ll need third party software to sort it out. And that third party may or may not meet the same security standards that we’ve grown accustomed to with Apple. Meaning, one lateral move out of our secure computer standards into unknown third party territory, may add extra risks. Leaving us back at square one: how do we safely destroy sensitive data?

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“Is the answer hug this little guy until I feel safe?”

The good news? It’s a feature that has been available all along.

Encryption. By accessing System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Filevault > (click the lock in the lower left if this option is grayed out) > Turn on Filevault.

This option encrypts your hard drive with AES 128 bit blocks and a 256 bit key to encryption on the disk. In short,

only people with your password can access this data,

mainly you or anyone using the computer after you’ve unlocked it. Exactly the same way someone can access your data before you delete it. However, once the computer reboots or is locked, a password is needed. Without this password, all is lost, your data is gone forever. Just like all of those instant messenger conversations from the 90’s.

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“Are you talking at me? I’m the only one present. So you must be talking at me.”

But, after all, the short answer is yes. Your hard drive is safe. As long as it’s encrypted. Which really makes it feel like the computer is holding your data hostage. And it definitely doesn’t satiate the emotional satisfaction once provided by the slow loading “Secure Empty Trash” feature, representing the virtual shredding of all my documents as times of yore. But it beats training a monkey to do it the old-fashioned way with a paper shredder and garbage bags.

If you have extra questions about security, send us a message.

Or maybe you would like us to implement security for you, send us a message.

You might also want something completely different, you guessed it, send us a message.

We love to brainstorm with people about all the different ways of getting a new business up and running or onto the next level.