wipe - delete a file (or files) securely
wipe [-r] file [file [...]]
wipe securely deletes a file by first overwriting the file with a pattern of 0xAA, 0x55, 0xFF, and 0x0, then unlinking the file.
If the -r option is supplied, wipe will recurse into any directories specified on the command line.
The following example will wipe the files foo and bar:
wipe foo bar
This example will recurse into baz and wipe everything in it. The effect is similar to ``rm -rf baz''.
wipe -r baz
Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>
rm(1)
If you want to be really sure that your data won't be recovered, try melting the disks down. That seems to be pretty reliable.