This quick video focuses on the importance of cleaning up leftover junk files, metadata and caches to avoid leaking private data. Let's look at some established open-source tools for Windows, Linux and macOS and clear up some myths about file recovery on the way.
The software BleachBit was first released in 2008 and automatically cleans caches, temporary files, logs and similar files of different programs. You select files to delete on the left and get a more detailed explanation of the options on the right. Then you can click the Preview button to receive a list of files that are about to be deleted. Finally, the Clean button actually deletes them. The more exciting cleaner options are in the top left of the window. You can shred files and folders and even wipe the entire free space of a drive. So, what's the difference between simply deleting files and shredding them? Deleted files are usually not gone from the hard drive immediately. The operating system just flags the parts of the drive where they are located as This part may be reallocated and overwritten. As long as they weren't overwritten, they might still be recoverable. BleachBit's shredding option overwrites the file instantly for you so it isn't recoverable anymore. This is also what the Wipe Free Space option does: It fills the free space with random data and then deletes it. Overwriting data one time is called one pass which the developers of BleachBit consider enough to be unrecoverable. They even view any more passes as time wasting snake oil technology, although other reputable software still includes these options. I should note that regardless of the number of wipe passes used, many governments and organizations consider mechanical destruction of the hard drive as the most foolproof method to erasing data. And for even more security, full volume encryption, for example with Veracrypt, should of course be used as well.
If all this sounded too excessive for your personal use, here's a cleaner tool for everyday application: ExifCleaner removes the metadata tags embedded in media files. This photo for example includes dozens of invisible Exif tags like the camera model and even the exact location the photo was taken at. ExifCleaner is incredibly easy to use, you just drag the photos to clean into the window. It shows how many tags were removed and overwrites the file with the cleaned version. Check the metadata again and everything except the most basic data should be removed. Windows 10 also has built-in metadata cleaner which I tried for comparison but unfortunately, it didn't remove all possible tags.
By the way, both Android and iOS have apps to remove Exif data on the phone directly before sharing and on iOS you can also create a quick shortcut to do it yourself. It's just three steps:
- Select photos.
- Convert the image to another format or keep the original.
- The important thing is the uncheck Preserve Metadata.
- Finally, share the converted image. In the shortcut settings,
- you can enable Show in Share Sheet to run it from the Photos app directly.