delete

When it's time to get rid of old computers, many people think erasing and reformatting a hard drive is sufficient to keep private information out of others' hands. But to keep your private data safe from others, you really need a more thorough tool and EAST-Tec's DisposeSecure fits the bill. This hard-disk and network sanitizing utility can completely eliminate data beyond the possibility of recovery. It uses Department of Defense standards for data destruction, but users can configure custom security levels too.

DisposeSecure is a powerful and competent tool, and its interface and features reflect that, once you … Read more

Are you an ex-Windows user that misses having an uninstaller or just want a better way to get rid of unwanted apps completely? AppZapper makes it easy to uninstall apps along with all their related files in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Simply drag-and-drop the unwanted software into program's interface, and AppZapper will gather and list all the related files so you can eradicate them from your hard drive in one fell swoop. The developer of this app calls it the "uninstaller Apple forgot" and we agree that it is both extremely useful and easy-to-use. One important … Read more

Recently, I removed my iPhone e-mail accounts so I could troubleshoot a problem with the Mail app. But when I reinstalled the accounts, I found that I wasn't able to delete messages from one account's in-box.

The account in question was a POP3 account used to retrieve messages from my spam e-mail filtering service. It was sending and receiving e-mail just fine, but whenever I tried to delete a message from the in-box, my iPhone would present the following error:

Unable to move message to folder "Trash" because the folder does not exist.

Luckily, I was … Read more

Hermetic Systems' Data Destroyer is a disk-wiping utility that can render data unrecoverable by overwriting it multiple times. It will scrub your hard disks, floppies, and ZIP disks clean. It will delete individual files, whole directories, or entire disks full of data. You can select the type and number of purges, or overwrites. Data Destroyer will even estimate how long it will take to perform the selected number of purges. It meets stringent U.S. Department of Defense standards for data disk sanitization, too. If it's good enough for the Pentagon, it'll probably meet your needs, too.

Data … Read more

DupeRazor Duplicate Files Removal Kit offers to help clear up space on a computer by seeking out and destroying duplicate files. While it provides great results, its speed was a major concern.

The duplicate remover's interface is very simple and only offers a few variations, which kept us on task. There is a brief Help file, but the program is intuitive enough that we didn't need it. The program offered us the option to alter the size of our scan from the entire C: drive down to a single folder through a simple file tree. The scanning process … Read more

In Windows 95, Microsoft extended the allowable length of filenames beyond the former 8.3 convention. But filenames longer than 255 characters (or 260 characters in Vista) are still a problem; typically, such files cannot be opened or run, and often they cannot be renamed or deleted using Windows Explorer. File/Folder Clean-Up Tool (Long Path) purports to solve this problem by providing an Explorer-like interface with which to find and delete files and directories with long or corrupt names. Unfortunately, the trial version of the tool disables the actual delete function. With a price tag of $19, this application … Read more

Be aware that Snow Leopard seems to have a problem with how guest accounts are handled on systems that had them enabled before upgrading from Leopard. In several cases, people have accidentally logged in to their guest accounts and upon logging out and back into their normal accounts have found their data missing. We reported on this problem in the past, but here are some extra options for restoring the lost home folder from a backup.… Read more

Delete Duplicate Files offers to help users clear valuable space on their computer by erasing duplicates. However, its trial limits kept us from fully operating this program.

The program's interface was simple enough that following the onscreen instructions and navigating the layout was enough to get us started without visiting the topic-by-topic Help file. We found the entire process to be broken down into such simple components that it probably wouldn't take more than a few seconds to delete files. The program scanned files for content or by file name quickly, taking less than a minute, and the … Read more

A video posted recently on YouTube demonstrates, on an iPod Touch, a potential security risk for users of iPhone OS 3.0. The bug allows e-mails that have already deleted to be viewed by searching for the title of the deleted message.

The results of the search display two copies of the message. Selecting either one of these the first time will cause Mail to crash. The second time you select the messages, the iPhone may display the original message or you may get a warning that states: "Message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted.&… Read more