Sometimes, you may want to delete a file in Linux in a way that makes it impossible or very difficult to recover. This is useful if you want to protect your sensitive or confidential data from unauthorized access. To do this, you need to use a tool that can overwrite the file with random data before deleting it, making it unreadable. One such tool is shred, which is a command line utility that can securely delete files and devices. To delete a file with shred, you need to use the -u option, which removes the file after overwriting it. For example, to delete a file named test.txt with shred, you would type: shred -u test.txt You can also specify how many times you want to overwrite the file with the -n option, and what pattern of data you want to use with the -z option. For example, to delete a file named test.txt with shred, overwriting it 3 times and filling the final overwrite with zeros, you would type: shred -u -n 3 -z test.txt Be aware that shred may not work on some file systems or devices that use caching, compression, or encryption. Also, shred does not delete the file name or metadata, which may still reveal some information about the file. To delete the file name and metadata, you need to use another tool, such as wipe, which is a command line utility that can securely delete files and directories. To delete a file with wipe, you need to use the -f option, which forces the deletion of the file. For example, to delete a file named test.txt with wipe, you would type: wipe -f test.txt You can also specify how many times you want to overwrite the file with the -r option, and what pattern of data you want to use with the -p option. For example, to delete a file named test.txt with wipe, overwriting it 3 times and filling the final overwrite with zeros, you would type: wipe -f -r 3 -p 0 test.txt