Shredding files
GPG Keychain 1.2.1 (1147)
Hi there, I am wondering if GPG offer the possibility to securely "shred" files? I have been using Symantec PGP and it has that handy dandy shredder icon. I can just drag any file that I want to disappear forever to it, and it destroys it securely. Does GPG do that?
I now upgraded my iMac to El Capitan and PGP won't work on that OS, so I would love to switch to GPG.
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Steve on 09 Jan, 2016 05:09 PM
Hey Marilou,
welcome to the GPGTools community support platform.
GPG Suite does not offer any secure file shredding option. File shredding is not related to OpenPGP in any way. There are a few tools out there which do this. Your favorite search engine will help you out on this. We occasionally get this feature request but have no immediate plans to add this functionality.
Hope you can find a good solution.
All the best,
steve
Support Staff 2 Posted by Steve on 12 Jan, 2016 11:25 AM
We already have a feature request to add file shredding capabilities to GPG Suite and I've added your comments and vote to it. The number of votes is one factor that helps us to determine what feature to add next.
Unfortunately there's no workaround for this problem at the time being. We're very sorry for that. This discussion will be updated however, when the requested feature is available.
Have a nice day,
steve
3 Posted by M on 12 Jan, 2016 01:34 PM
Hi Steve,
Thank you for that. I recently read that file shredding does not work on
SSD drive because of the way the drive handles the writing process (there
is no guarantee that the writing of multiple passes of zeros happens right
on the file that you want to shred - it can happen at random places on the
disk, making it pointless). Apparently that is why Apple removed the
"secure empty trash" function from their latest OS. Is that true?
Support Staff 4 Posted by Steve on 13 Jan, 2016 09:38 AM
Yes, that is correct.
The answer would be to use full disk encryption or use an encrypted disk image.
Which also reminds me, we should close this feature request as won'tfix. Apple did the right thing by removing the "secure empty trash" option.
Steve closed this discussion on 10 Feb, 2016 03:30 PM.