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A method to securely empty trashed Mail messages
Authored by: Makosuke on Nov 11, '04 05:58:28PM

Indeed, the only thing this hint does in encourage people to waste their time while giving themselves a false sense of security.

It's akin to making a copy of a file, then securely deleting that copy while leaving the original intact, believing all the while that you've securely deleted the original. Bad news, and I hope this hint gets removed or prominently noted so as not to mislead people.

There are ways to get mail to purge deleted mail from the .mbox files, but I'm not sure what those are. In the mean time, here's the only definite solution I can think of off the top of my head:

1) Delete the messages from Mail.
2) Quit Mail.
3) Open the .mbox file in a text editor.
4) Find the messages you don't want sticking around, delete them, and save the mailbox.

5) If you want to be REALLY secure, you could instead save the mbox from the text editor into a new file, then securely delete the old one using the Finder, then put your newly saved copy in place of the old one. When you reopen Mail, it shouldn't know the difference.

Anyway, the point is that when stuff is stored in a simple flat-file database (which UNIX MBOX files are), security isn't that easy.



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