Erasing everything on your Mac.

[pilkenton]

With the recent news of the FBI raiding Subway's Jared and confiscating his computers, I was wondering if there is a way to erase everything on your computer so no one will be able to check and see what you've looked at.

 

[teethemagicbee]

Haha, has someone been looking at things they shouldn't?

 

[yjchua95]

With the recent news of the FBI raiding Subway's Jared and confiscating his computers, I was wondering if there is a way to erase everything on your computer so no one will be able to check and see what you've looked at.

First, FileVault it. Under the Fifth Amendment, authorities cannot force you to give up your password. Besides, FileVault is really secure (XTS-AES128 and AES256) and even governments use these encryption standards.

If you want to erase everything, boot from a bootable OS X installer and do a 7 pass secure erase.

 

[2984839]

FileVault, then DBAN.

edit: But if you're worried about authorities seeing "what you've looked at", then erasing your hard drive won't help you. They'll get your browsing history from your ISP.

 

[pilkenton]

Just curious about how much control the feds have over your life. Can something like Tor browser eliminate big brother watching?

 

[2984839]

Just curious about how much control the feds have over your life. Can something like Tor browser eliminate big brother watching?

No. Many of the exit nodes are run by government agencies (from multiple nations) and you can bet they capture all traffic that runs across them. There are many ways to blow your anonymity using Tor, as well as exploits that do the same. Tor makes it a harder problem, but not insurmountable. Using Tor also makes you stick out like a sore thumb among internet traffic.