Security & Privacy

An Apple Store in Seattle, Washington, was recently burglarized, the thieves walking away a number of laptops that had been in the store for service. Some of these laptops probably contained personal information: who knows what people had on their Macs. What do you store on your laptop? User names and passwords; serial numbers; maybe even credit card numbers?

Whenever you send a computer out for service or repairs, you should remove all personal information, and securely delete all the free space on its hard drive. Even if the computer isn’t stolen or lost in transit, can you really trust the many people who may handle it during repairs?

To do this, start by deleting all the personal files you have on the computer being serviced. (First, you should back up all these files with Intego Personal Backup.) Next, open Disk Utility; this program is in the Utilities folder, found in your Applications folder. Click on the disk or volume that contained your personal files, click the Erase tab, then click Erase Free Space.

A sheet displays offering three options:

You can choose to Zero Out Deleted Files, or you can use a 7-pass or 35-pass erase. These latter methods are much more secure, but take longer. While the default option, Zero Out Free Space, might still allow spies to get at your data, the 7-pass option is more than safe enough for all but budding James Bonds.

When you have done this, you can send your Mac in for service without worrying about anyone finding any personal data on it.