Is using the “Clear History” and “Clear Cache” functions in my web browser sufficient?
Maybe not. When you clear your cache or history, you do recover the disk space that was being used, but the potential for the data to be recovered by someone else is still there. As Kim Komando said, “When you delete a file, its space on the hard drive is essentially marked “this space available.” The file remains on your hard drive. But [the operating system] considers it forgotten and will reuse the space whenever necessary. Only then will the deleted information be destroyed [Komando, “How to delete files for good”, May 2005] So any time you use a delete function, like “clear history” to clear search history, “clear cache” to clear browser cache or try to delete email by dragging it to the trash, the data is still on your hard drive until it is overwritten by something else. And if you have alot of free space on your hard drive, it could be there for months or even years.
