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burnedfaceless
Asked: 2015-08-23 10:59:47 +0800 CST

How to erase Ubuntu user account

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My company purchased an Ubuntu computer we are returning due to hardware issues.

How can I erase my account? I was going to erase the user will this be sufficient.

These guys are honest businessmen I just have logs and other sensitive data on here.

secure-erase

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Erasing of the user is sufficient, but the deleted files can be restored.

    I suggest shredding the user home directory /home/user and then removing the user.

    To shred the directory run

    find /home/$USER -exec shred {} \;

    and then remove the user.

    That will overwrite all user data.

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  2. To to a few passes over the data to prevent recovery:

    mount -a
apt-get install secure-delete
srm -rvz /

    Just a full wipe:

    mount -a
rm -rf /

    Make sure that no other storage device is plugged in and that no remote filesystems are mounted.

    If you would only like to erase user data, substitute the / for ~

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