“Everyone needs to securely erase data at some point — even on a Mac,” Jay Vrijenhoek writes for Intego. “After all, securely erasing your data ensures your personal and private information does not end up being found and abused by someone else.”
“Whether it’s the NSA, a burglar or someone who rummages through garbage for old hard drives with the intention of extracting data, we can rest assured (or not so much) that there are people out there who are after your data,” Vrijenhoek writes. “Targeted or by accident, if a nefarious individual gets their hands on your data, you can very well end up in trouble.”
“Even though all new Macs these days come with Flash storage (which I’ll cover later), there are still plenty of hard drives around and in use today. Whether it’s a hard drive in an older Mac or an external hard drive, if it is accessible, you can use Disk Utility to securely erase it,” Vrijenhoek writes. “Because Solid State Drives (SSD) and Flash Drives store data differently, a secure erase with Disk Utility is not possible… If we can’t be confident an SSD was properly erased, then there is only one route to take that will ensure all data is beyond the reach of anyone: Using encryption.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Securely erasing data from your Mac is an especially good idea before you sell it or give it away.