Best Free Software Foldershredder 1.0
What you need: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1 or 10
You probably know that right-clicking a file and choosing Delete doesn’t remove the file from your computer. Instead it moves it to the Recycle Bin, which is effectively your PC’S jail cell. Emptying the Recycle Bin won’t entirely rid your PC of the file, either - that merely moves it to Death Row. Until your PC overwrites the condemned file, any snooper or hacker with a modicum of skill can still find it. So if you want to delete private data, clicking Delete is not the way to do it.
Free new program Foldershredder lets you obliterate files permanently with one click. It overwrites files not just once but many times by renaming and resizing them, and even encrypts them before overwriting. High-level demolition strategies like this are used by companies and governments to virtually ‘shred’ their secrets. If it’s good enough for them, it’s almost certainly good enough for you.
Foldershredder is powerful and easy to use (see our steps below). It’s also quick – we dispatched 50MB of photos in 0.1 seconds. There are limitations, of course. You can’t select multiple folders, and you can’t drag and drop folders on to the program’s window to speed up the shredding process.
Be warned: there’s no chance of sticky-taping these shredded documents back together, ever. So if there’s any chance that you might want to access your data again, consider creating backups on a USB stick or cloud service such as Onedrive before you click Start Shredding.
The program is portable, so there’s no installation to worry about, which means you can use it on a PC with no internet connection for downloading. To get it, click either of the ‘Download FS1.0 Portable’ buttons and then extract the program file from the ZIP file. We checked it with 58 antivirus programs via the free online tool Virustotal ( www.virustotal.com), and all 58 deemed it safe.