[ Thanks to Mike
Weber for this link. ]
“When you use the ‘rm’ utility, you may think that you’re
deleting a file, but you’re not. All you’re doing is removing the
file’s index–or, inode number–from the hard drive. The file is
still there, and can still be recovered, as long as you don’t
overwrite the space that it occupies with another file. (Even then,
recovery experts still might be able to retrieve it.)“If you have sensitive files that you need to delete, consider
using ‘shred’. This handy utility will overwrite a file with
gibberish multiple times, and optionally, will delete the
file…”