Overwrite Data stored on magnetic disk media can be recovered using sophisticated analysis techniques. This means that, for example, even if some your old file was overwritten by new data, maybe it's still recoverable. Overwrite is a UNIX utility that try to make harder data recovering. What overwrite does is to overwrite files using random patterns and deterministic patterns, as suggested in the Peter Gutmann's paper "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory". Disclaimer There are no proofs about the fact that overwrite works, I'm just able to check that overwrite is able to overwrite the files with specific patterns but I've no proofs that this makes the data harder to be recovered. Also it's possible that if you use some type of hard-disk, file system, operative system, overwrite will NOT able to overwrite the file correctly. Use it at your risk. License This software is under the GPL license The overwrite homepage is located at: http://www.kyuzz.org/antirez/overwrite.html Cryptographic signatures and checksums may be provided by the developers at the URL(s) above. Wiretapped recommends that users check these before use of the software/information.